#this moment still slices through me like an axe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

doumadono · 5 months

Text

Warnings: violence, viking!Dabi, viking!Shoto, earl!Endeavor, viking!Hawks, viking!Natsuo, fem!reader, viking themes, smut (deflowering, p in v, blood)

Summary: as you reconcile with Touya, the dynamics between you two intensify, and with his departure alongside Shoto and Hawks, you find yourself grappling with the profound implications of Touya's gift, navigating a new chapter in your life

Word count: circa 8.1k

A/N: if you'd like to be added to the taglist for this series, please let me know ♥

KVITRAVN - MHA VIKING AU • MY HERO ACADEMIA MASTERLIST

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ACT IV - IN THE VEIL OF DARKNESS

Several days had slipped by.

Touya, consumed by the impending expedition, had become an elusive figure in your world. The anticipation of the journey ahead, alongside his youngest brother Shoto, Hawks, and a group of warriors, left little room for casual conversations. The Great Hall bore witness to his unwavering focus as he meticulously prepared, sharpening his weapons with an intensity that hinted at the challenges that lay ahead.

In the midst of the preparations, you frequently encountered Touya in the hall. His presence was undeniable, a brooding silhouette engrossed in the art of perfecting his sword and axe. The air around him crackled with an energy that mirrored the impending adventure.

Yet, despite the shared space and the fleeting glimpses, there was a palpable silence between you two. Whenever your paths crossed, he would promptly withdraw, leaving unspoken words hanging in the air.

In the meantime, Shoto, on the other hand, endeavored to draw nearer to you, under the impression that you harbored an interest in him. However, you gracefully declined each of his advances. Yet, in the face of his advances, you maintained a graceful poise, politely but firmly declining each of his attempts.

The evening was bathed in a cold, biting chill, the kind that seeped into the bones. As the sky painted itself in hues of indigo and ebony, you found yourself entrusted with a task that seemed simple on the surface but proved to be more challenging than expected.

The warriors' clothes, worn and stained from battles past, awaited a thorough cleansing. The Great Hall had called upon you to fetch water from the bay, two heavy pails that seemed determined to resist your every attempt to carry them. Wrapped in a thick fur that clung to your shoulders, you ventured into the frosty night, a lone figure navigating the shadows.

The bay was a silent expanse, its waters reflecting the pale light of the moon. The air was crisp, filled with the briny scent of the sea. With each step, the crunch of frost-coated grass beneath your boots echoed in the stillness of the night.

As you reached the bay, the water shimmered in the moonlight, a tranquil contrast to the arduous task ahead. The pails, when filled, felt like anchors, their weight digging into your weary arms. The wind whispered tales of distant lands, carrying with it a numbing cold that penetrated through layers of clothing.

The journey back to the Great Hall became a battle against the elements. The fur draped around your shoulders provided little solace against the biting wind, and the weight of the water-laden pails seemed to increase with every step. Your breath formed delicate clouds in the frigid air as you pressed forward, determination masking the discomfort.

The Great Hall loomed in the distance, its warm glow promising respite from the harsh elements. With each step, the anticipation of a crackling fire and the warmth of shelter spurred you on.

As you struggled with the weight of the water-filled pails, a smooth, male voice sliced through the cold. The offer of help hung in the air, a surprising interruption to your solitary struggle. Instinctively, you refused, a reflex born of independence and perhaps a hint of pride.

Yet, within moments, the burden was lifted from your frozen hands. Bewilderment etched across your face, you slowly raised your head to find the source of assistance. A shock coursed through you as your eyes met those of Touya, draped in a thick, black bear fur.

Silence lingered for a moment before you managed a nod, acknowledging his unspoken gesture of aid. The air crackled with unspoken tension as the pails now rested in Touya's capable hands. The night seemed to hold its breath, awaiting the exchange of words that hung in the chilly air.

You suddenly uttered, your voice measured, "I appreciate the help, but I had it under control."

A chuckle escaped Touya's lips, warm against the icy backdrop. "Sure looked like it," he remarked, a teasing glint in his turquise eyes. Touya's gaze lingered on you, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. Sensing your reluctance, he ventured, "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

You nodded, the weight of unspoken words lingering in the air. The memory of Touya witnessing to Shoto's unexpected kiss, cast a shadow over the present.

Touya, breaking the awkward silence, continued, "Listen, about that night…" He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "I should have said something. I should have…"

You interrupted, your voice a mix of reluctance and honesty, "It's in the past, Touya. Water under the bridge. And just so you know, I didn't want that. Your brother was drunk."

"I avoided talking to you," he confessed, his voice tinged with bitterness, "because I thought you were into Shoto. I thought he'd be better for you in so many ways than I could ever be, Y/N."

His words halted you in your tracks, and you turned to face him, your expression a mix of surprise and bitterness. "Why say it now?" you asked, your tone edged with a bitter curiosity.

Touya sighed. "Because I need you to know the truth. I need you to understand why I've been distant. My scars, my fucked-up character — I didn't think I was enough for you. I thought I was saving you from someone like me. Not to mention I brought you here against your will."

The truth hung heavy in the air, and for a moment, the silence between you was almost suffocating. Lowering your head, you took a deep breath before opening up to him, "Despite all that, Touya, you've always been kind to me. You've seemed to genuinely care, and I appreciate all the little gestures."

A hint of surprise flickered in Touya's eyes, and you continued, "Even tonight, when you helped me with the pails, it didn't go unnoticed. And about your scars, both physical and mental — I don't mind. They don't define you." You paused, reflecting on a specific memory, "Remember the night we kissed? I felt comfortable, Touya. Despite the circumstances, I felt a connection. Your scars never mattered to me then, and they don't now. And I have no idea why you like me. I'm nothing but a thrall."

Touya's frown deepened as the word "thrall" escaped your lips. "Don't say that," he hissed, a hint of intensity in his voice.

You chuckled bitterly, "But it's the truth. I'm just a slave to you and your family. After these months, I've gotten used to it, even if it's still hard to be polite at times when people treat me like a piece of meat."

The weight of your words hung in the air, and Touya gently placed the pails on the ground. Cupping your face in his gloved hands, the soft touch of thick leather against your reddened cheeks felt surprisingly comforting. "Don't ever call yourself that," he insisted, his eyes searching yours. "You're not just a thrall to me. You're… you."

You met his gaze, a mix of confusion and gratitude in your eyes.

Touya continued, his voice softer now, "Around you, I don't have to pretend. I don't have to be someone I never was, you know? Only with you, I feel like I can be myself fully."

His words lingered in the cold night air, a vulnerable admission that cut through the complexities of your situation. The touch of his gloved hands on your face, an unexpected tenderness, conveyed a depth of emotion that defied the roles you both found yourselves in.

In that moment, beneath the moonlit sky, Touya, for the first time, allowed himself to be seen, and you, in turn, found solace in the unexpected warmth of his touch.

Silence settled between you and Touya, a quiet understanding born from the unspoken exchange. You nodded, acknowledging his words, and without further discussion, you both resumed the journey back to the Great Hall.

The moon cast its gentle glow on the path ahead as you walked side by side. The rhythmic sound of boots on frost-coated ground echoed in the stillness.

As you approached the Great Hall, the door creaked open, and you both stepped inside, the warmth enveloping you like a familiar embrace. The pails were set down, and the flickering light of the hearth danced on the walls.

"Thanks, Touya. I appreciate the help," gratitude filled your voice as you thanked him for his assistance.

A small, genuine smile curved on his lips as he removed his gloves and fur. "It's no problem. Let me know where you want these," he gestured to the pails.

"The backroom," you replied, "Hilda and the other girls are there. We're doing laundry tonight."

With a nod, Touya complied, carrying the pails to the backroom.

As he entered, Hilda and the other thralls, caught off guard by the unexpected guest, momentarily stood up, bowing respectfully.

Touya, however, remained polite and offered his assistance. "Let me help you with that."

Hilda, blinking in surprise, tried to dissuade him. "Prince Touya, this is not a task befitting of your status. We can handle it."

Touya chuckled, a genuine warmth in his keen eyes. "I'm here to help. No need to treat me any differently. What can I do?"

Hilda reluctantly assigned him a task, and soon, the room buzzed with activity. Touya, alongside you and the other thralls, engaged in the laundry work. The atmosphere, once laden with tension, now hummed with a shared sense of purpose.

Conversations flowed naturally as you worked, the rhythmic splash of water and the occasional laughter blending into a harmonious melody. Touya, despite his royal status, interacted with the thralls on a personal level, breaking down the barriers that society had imposed.

As the laundry was washed and the room filled with the scent of soap and clean linen, Touya continued to lend a helping hand. Together with Hilda, he assisted in hanging the freshly laundered clothes, ensuring they would dry efficiently.

However, unbeknownst to all of you, a pair of sharp turquoise eyes observed the scene from a concealed vantage point. The eyes lingered on the group, absorbing the unexpected sight of Touya, a heir, engaging in the everyday tasks alongside thralls.

Hilda's gratitude was expressed through a gentle rub on Touya's shoulder. "Thank you, Touya."

He responded with a nod and a warm smile. "Anytime," he said sincerely. "You can always ask me for help if needed. I will do my best to assist."

The evening continued with the familiar sounds and scents of the kitchen. Pots clanged, and the aroma of simmering dishes wafted through the air as you busied yourself preparing supper for the earl Endeavor, his sons, and the departing warriors, including Hawks. The flickering flames in the hearth cast a warm glow over the room, but a sense of unease lingered within you.

Touya's presence had offered a respite from the isolation you often felt, but the worry about his well-being persisted. The failed attempt to gather information from Shoto had left you in the dark, and the unanswered questions weighed heavily on your mind.

Hilda, noticing your distraction, scolded you for bringing the young prince into the fold of daily duties like laundry. "You shouldn't involve the prince in such matters," she chided, her tone firm.

You listened to her admonishment, understanding the societal implications of your actions, yet you couldn't help but defend Touya. "He genuinely wanted to help. It's more than I can say for some others."

As the night unfolded, you focused on the task at hand, serving the prepared supper to the earl and his sons, hoping that the meal would provide a momentary respite from the weight of unanswered questions and the complexities of the world you found yourself entangled in.

Amidst the clatter of cutlery and the hum of conversation at the dinner table, your keen observational skills didn't fail to pick up on the subtle glances exchanged between Shoto and Hawks. They sat on opposite sides of the table, but a series of shared looks and silent nods hinted at some unspoken understanding. Though you couldn't quite discern the nature of their exchange, a feeling of unease settled within you.

Despite the undercurrent of mystery, your attention occasionally wavered as you found yourself caught in the interplay of glances with Touya. Whenever your eyes met his, a warmth spread across your cheeks, and a shy smile played on your lips. Touya's nods and the subtle touch of his hand when you refilled his cup with mead sent a flutter through your heart.

The atmosphere at the table, fraught with a mix of hidden agendas and unspoken emotions, contrasted sharply with the routine of serving and replenishing dishes.

The night unfolded in a flurry of activity. After the supper, you and the other thralls diligently cleaned the main chamber, ensuring every dish and piece of cutlery sparkled in the soft glow of candlelight. The earl Endeavor and his sons retired for the night, and as the main chamber returned to a state of quiet, the rhythmic sound of washing dishes and the occasional hum of conversation among the thralls echoed through the longhouse.

After the tasks were complete, and the main chamber restored to its usual order, you took a quick bath to wash away the remnants of the day. As you made your way back to your shared room, wrapped in a simple linen robe, you unexpectedly crossed paths with Touya in the hallway.

"Touya," you greeted him, a mixture of surprise on your face as you tightened the robe around your figure. "You startled me!"

He flashed a confident smile. "Hey Y/N. I was hoping I'd run into you before I leave tomorrow morning."

You raised an eyebrow, a playful smirk forming on your lips. "And what brings you seeking my company, my lord?"

"Well, it gets lonely in those grand chambers," he mused.

You couldn't help but laugh at his audacity. "Are you implying I'm your solution to loneliness, my lord?"

Touya's grin widened, and he nodded. "I guess so, yes. Plus, I can't resist the chance to spend more time with someone as captivating as you."

You rolled your eyes, but a playful glint danced in them. "You're quite the charmer, aren't you?"

"Only with the ones who matter."

After a moment of consideration, you nodded. "Alright. I'll stay with you tonight."

The warmth of Touya's chamber enveloped you as soon as you stepped in alongside him, the crackling fire from a fireplace casting a gentle glow.

You tightened the robe around you, feeling a sense of comfort and vulnerability in this shared space. The flickering shadows played on the walls, creating a dance of light and shadow.

With a graceful movement, Touya began to unbutton his white shirt. The flickering firelight highlighted the contours of his physique as he revealed the toned lines beneath the fabric. He folded the shirt with a practiced ease and placed it gently on a nearby chair, the white contrasting with the rich hues of the room.

As he laid on bed, Touya's eyes met yours, a silent invitation lingering in the air. He reached out, pulling you closer, and you could feel the warmth radiating from his scarred chest. The touch was both gentle and reassuring, a gesture that spoke of a shared vulnerability beneath the layers of status and circumstance.

You nestled against Touya, resting your head on his chest, feeling the rhythmic rise and fall as he breathed.

As the quiet moments passed, the inevitable topic of Touya's departure hung in the air like a lingering shadow. You couldn't shake the feeling of sadness that settled in your chest, and the words weighed heavily on your tongue. "Touya," you began, your voice soft but filled with genuine concern, "I can't help but worry about what might happen when you leave. Shoto… He's unpredictable, and I'm afraid he might try to hurt you."

Touya's expression softened, and he let out a gentle chuckle. "You're worried about me, huh?" he said, his eyes meeting yours as he tilted your head by catching your face between his thumb and forefinger.

You nodded, the worry etched on your face. "I've seen the tension between you two, and with the things that have happened, I can't help but be concerned."

Touya's hand found yours, his touch reassuring. "Listen, Y/N," he said, his tone gentle, "I appreciate your concern, but you don't need to worry about me. Shoto and I have our differences, yes, but I can handle myself. Plus, I've got a knack for avoiding trouble." A small smile played on his lips as he continued, "And here you are, worried about your own captor, how amusing."

You blinked, a mix of surprise and confusion in your eyes. "I just don't want anything bad to happen," you admitted. "Despite everything, you've been kind to me, and I don't want to see you hurt. Is it so hard to understand?"

"I appreciate that, I really do," he said. "But you don't need to worry about me. Focus on yourself, okay? Things will work out, and I'll find a way to handle Shoto. Just take care of yourself in the meantime when I'm gone."

Then, with a gentle lean, Touya bridged the remaining distance, capturing your lips in a slow and passionate kiss. The world outside faded away as the warmth of the moment enveloped you. His lips moved with a tenderness against yours.

As the kiss lingered, it held the promise of both solace and anticipation, a silent affirmation that in the midst of uncertainties, there existed moments of connection that could be cherished.

Touya's kiss was intense, a fervent embrace that drew you closer, your bodies molding together seamlessly. A pleasant buzz filled his mind as your lips danced with his, and he felt the alluring weight of your leg draped over his muscular thigh. With a smooth motion, his hand descended, fingers curving to grip the soft flesh of your exposed thighs.

In response, your nimble fingers wove through his white hair, eliciting a soft groan from Touya. A sudden, sharp tug sent a gasp escaping his lips.

Impatience guided his hands as he skillfully unraveled your robe, allowing it to slide off your shoulders, revealing the supple skin beneath. The sight before him left him breathless. "Y/N," he whispered, the words barely parting his lips, "You're so beautiful."

Mounting him fully with newfound confidence, you recognized there was no reason for shame. As the realization washed over you, you deliberately shed your robe, letting it fall to the side, baring your body completely to his keen gaze. Your lips were gently caught between your teeth as his calloused hands found their place on your hips, a slow ascent following the contours of your waist, finally reaching your breasts. His touch was tender, cupping them lightly.

You captured Touya's bottom lip between your teeth, the kiss deepening as you almost drew blood. The resulting pain elicited a loud moan from him, prompting him to assert control - he swiftly shifted, flipping you onto your back, pinning you to the furs beneath with the weight of his hips and his hands firmly securing yours above your head.

A soft grunt escaped you, followed by a whimper that sent a jolt of desire straight to his cock; it was alreadyt tenting in his dark pants.

Touya's mouth found its way to your neck, where he suckled with a fervor that left an angry mark, destined to be a bruise by tomorrow. Your arms instinctively curled around his neck, and you gasped softly, welcoming the pleasant weight of his dominance and the enveloping warmth that surrounded you in the charged intimacy of the moment.

Touya emitted a gruff sound; the truth was, he hadn't been with a woman in years, and the enticing warmth of your body, coupled with your deference and moans, was stirring a primal desire within him. With practiced skill, he unbuttoned his pants with one hand, letting them slide down his muscular thighs. In a swift motion, he kicked them off, unveiling his well-endowed shaft that. A gasp escaped him as the room's air enveloped his throbbing member, causing it to pulsate involuntarily.

Soft, breathy sounds emanated from your lips now as Dabi moved his hips against yours, his throbbing cock damp and solid against the gentle skin of your hip. You responded by wrapping your legs around his firm waist, pressing against him in a mutual, fervent embrace.

"Y/N," Touya murmured, his voice a low, lustful cadence. He descended down your body, nestling his face between the soft contours of your breasts. Warm breath, coming in soft pants, caressed your skin, sending shivers through you. His touch worked its magic; your nipples hardened under his skillful exploration. Touya took one into his mouth, suckling softly, the flat of his tongue tracing a tantalizing pattern again and again.

Firmly gripping the sides of his head, you filled his ears with the symphony of moans, the sounds now unceasing. Your movements became more fervent, heels digging into his firm ass as you squirmed against him.

Touya emitted a gruff, almost winded grunt, his desire evident. His fingers ventured southward, sliding between your thighs.

You sighed as his coarsed fingers touched your soft folds, finding them heated and slick, just for him.

Whispering soft words in a language Touya couldn't comprehend, you gently tugged on his hair, bringing him closer to seal your lips in an open-mouthed kiss. The exchange of tongues was a dance, each movement syncing seamlessly. Touya, guided by your touch, positioned himself at your entrance, teasingly rubbing his cock along your wet folds.

A whimper escaped you, only to be stifled by Touya's loose hair that fell to the side, playfully tickling your face and finding its way into your mouth, causing laughter to bubble between you. As he rested his weight on your body, Touya applied gentle pressure to the front of your neck with his free hand, a delicate squeeze accompanying the sensation. Simultaneously, he drove his rigid cock inside your willing body.

"Touya!" A cry of his name escaped your lips as you endeavored to relax, attempting to minimize the inevitable discomfort of the initial contact. Despite your efforts, the pain was unmistakable, casting a shadow over the shared intensity of the moment.

Lowering his head, Touya pressed a tender kiss to your temple, his lips brushing against your skin. His voice, laced with reassurance, urged you to take a deep breath.

Your eyes widened, a sharp gasp escaping your lips as Touya fully immersed himself within you. Your hands instinctively fisted in the furs around your head as you arched your back.

Touya, grunting at the sensation of tightness enveloping his cock, propped himself up over your form, holding still for a brief moment. As your gaze met his scarred face, lips parted and breath quickened, you smiled softly.

Touya's hand remained at your throat as he initiated a deliberate rhythm, pulling almost entirely away before plunging back in. With each of his controlled thrusts, a soft, breathy noise escaped you, spurring him on. His focus shifted to your flushed cheeks and pert breasts, rising and falling in tandem with your breath. Droplets of sweat traced paths between his shoulder blades and dotted his forehead, a single bead descending from the tip of his nose to splash onto your belly, prompting a gasp from you.

He paused in his movements, fully immersed within your wetness, savoring the intimate stillness that enveloped both of you.

Your hands sought purchase, gripping his thighs and tracing your nails over the taut muscles.

Touya, attuned to your desires, comprehended the silent cue. With a gentle release, he withdrew his hand from your throat and enveloped you in the shelter of his powerful arms, burying his face in the crook of your neck.

A soft whine escaped you at the subtle shift in angle, and as your moan caressed his ear, Touya withdrew, only to return with an impactful force, spreading your pussy wide with his cock. The intensity of the thrust nearly compelled a scream from you, your fingers trailing up his sweat-slicked, scarred back in response.

Touya emitted a low groan as he felt the clenching warmth of your pussy around him. Pulling back, he thrust into you with unrestrained force, over and over again. His teeth found the red mark he had imprinted earlier on the junction of your neck and shoulder, and his body moved with a raw intensity against yours. Your moans, a symphony of passion, intensified the desire pooling hotly in his belly. "Fuck, Y/N," Touya gasped loudly though gritted teeth.

One of your petite hands clutched his thigh, the fingernails like slivers of hot metal leaving an impression on his skin. The other hand wove into his long, white hair, a firm grip offering a delightful blend of sweet pain to complement the intense pleasure of your velvety, gummy walls embracing his pulsating cock. The sounds of his hips colliding with the backs of your pale thighs, his grunts and groans, and the whimpers escaping your lips were the only sounds to fill the chamber, creating a sensual symphony that left Touya buzzing from head to toe.

The fusion of your arousal and bloo, the lingering traces of your virginity, a gift offered to Touya, had become so intense that it now adorned the insides of your thighs and the front of his abdomen, covering the vertical strip of white hair running from his belly button to his groin in slickness. The wet, squelching noises echoed softly as he withdrew and thrust forcefully back into you.

Touya seized your tender lips with his own, engaging in a fervent kiss. His teeth grazed your tongue and the corners of your mouth. Another sharp pull on his white strands forced his mouth from yours, and as you gazed into his turquoise eyes, you let out a tiny gasp. "T-Touya…"

The vice-like grip of your soft walls around his dick prompted a strangled moan to escape Touya, his eyes briefly shutting in response. When they reopened, your back had arched, pressing your breasts firmly against his scarred chest. Your head tossed back, and the hold you had on his hair had loosened. A moment of suspended breath passed before it was replaced by a whimper.

Touya emitted a drawn-out, deep moan, his brow furrowing as you fluttered around his rigid shaft, coating it in a palpable surge of wetness mingled with traces of blood. The sensation sent shivers down his spine, and he sensed himself edging closer to the brink of his own release.

"Touya," you breathed, touching his cheek softly.

He sighed, surrendering to the sensation as he kept moving, albeit at a slower pace.

"Touya," you asserted, gripping his throat firmly, eliciting a raspy breath from him.

His climax engulfed him hard, prompting a whine akin to a wounded animal as he thrust into you with every ounce of intensity, releasing his essence into your yielding pussy.

Your hand descended to press against his chest, and he rode the waves of pleasure, his head dropping forward, lost in the overwhelming sensations, his mind devoid of coherent thoughts. "Fuck," he snorted. "Oh, fucking shit."

Your hurried breaths slowly brought him back to the present, grounding his focus. Tenderly, he draped his form over yours, planting wet kisses along the side of your face, his flaccid cock still nestled inside your folds. As your legs eased down to the bed, your fingers traced gentle patterns across the skin of Touya's muscular back.

Once your breathing had steadied, and the sheen of sweat on Dabi's body had mostly evaporated, he rolled off you onto his side.

You reached up, pushing a few stray strands of mussed hair away from Touya's face, tucking into his arms afterwards.

Touya cradled you, his arms providing a secure embrace, and he sighed, the lure of sleep tugging at the edges of his awareness. Pressing a tender kiss to the top of your head, he murmured, "I didn't hurt you, right?"

You nestled closer, content, and mumbled, "I'm more than good, Touya."

Touya held you close to his chest, his strong arms wrapped securely around you, and he gently rubbed your shoulders. "Thank you," he said, the words soft and sincere.

With a slight frown, you looked up at him. "Why are you thanking me?" you asked, curiosity etched in your gaze.

Touya met your eyes and explained, "You're the first woman I've been with in many years, and I want you to know it wasn't just about… you know, getting laid. It just felt like the right thing to do, to be that intimately close with you."

You fell quiet for a while, tracing patterns on his chest and abdomen with your fingertips. Eventually, you responded, your voice soft and sweet, "Did I let you down with how inexperienced I am?"

Touya's head shook, the gentle curve of a smile on his lips. "No, not at all. It was perfect. You were perfect. I appreciate you letting me claim you as mine."

You blinked, propping yourself up on his chest, curiosity in your eyes. "What does it mean, being yours?"

Touya met your gaze and explained while wrapping a strand of your hair around his forefinger, "It means I want you to be my woman, but only if you reciprocate my feelings."

A blush crept across your cheeks as you reevaluated everything that had transpired between the two of you — from the day he took you captive after the tragic events in your village to bringing you to his settlement and making you a thrall. Despite the lingering anger and sorrow in your soul, you couldn't deny the undeniable spark in your heart whenever you were close to him, whenever his eyes met yours.

After careful contemplation, you silently agreed, the unspoken understanding settling between you two as you gave him a slight nod.

Touya, his grip gentle yet firm, pulled you to him by your chin, sealing the moment with a kiss on your lips. "You're a free woman from now on."

As he released you, you sat up, eyes glistening with a mixture of emotions. With a quiver in your voice, you asked him, "What does this mean?"

He met your gaze, sincerity in his eyes, and replied, "It means you're free, no longer bound as a thrall. You have your own choices now, including whether you want to stay in Skjaldvargr or not."

A chill coursed through your veins as Touya's words sank in — unfamiliar and unsettling, the concept of freedom felt surreal. Blinking in disbelief, you grappled with the weight of this unexpected liberation. It was as if a door to an uncertain future had swung wide open, leaving you standing at the threshold, torn between the familiarity of captivity and the uncharted territory of choice.

Despite the cold tendrils of fear that coiled within you, an overwhelming wave of gratitude and an odd sense of vulnerability washed over. You hesitated for a moment, then, as if propelled by the uncertainty of newfound freedom, you hugged yourself to Touya. Tears spilled into the crook of his neck, a mixture of relief, gratitude, and an acknowledgment of the tangled emotions within.

Amidst your tears, you confessed, "I want to stay. I don't really have anywhere to go, and, strangely, I've grown fond of Skjaldvargr." The admission carried the weight of your complicated journey, a fusion of sorrow, attachment, and an unexpected connection with the people and places you had come to know.

Touya nodded affirmatively. "Well then, you'll stay here. My chambers are now yours, and you are an outright member of the settlement and my woman," he declared.

Shivers of worry coursed through you as you voiced your concerns about how Touya's father and brothers might react to the unconventional decision of freeing a thrall and choosing to be with her. Your apprehension deepened as you acknowledged your own perceived lack of talents, admitting, "I'm just a mere woman, and I don't really have many skills… I can sing and play a harp, but…"

Touya, smiling softly, gently pulled you close and silenced your self-deprecating words with a kiss. As he broke the kiss, he whispered, "Don't worry about that. I'll make it work." His reassurance lingered in the air, a promise that he intended to navigate the challenges ahead and carve a path for the two of you, regardless of the judgments and expectations that might come from his family. Touya, holding you close, looked into your eyes with a tender gaze. "I see way past the talents and appearance," he admitted softly. "What captivated me was your unaware gentleness, the way you carry yourself, and the kindness that emanates from you. That's what truly matters to me."

"Thank you, Touya Endeavorson," you whispered, kissing his jawline.

He chuckled softly, the sound a soothing lullaby, and soon, the gentle rhythm of sleep claimed both of you.

The next day, as the sun hung very low on the horizon, the warriors gathered for the final meeting with the earl.

Dabi, reluctantly torn from your peaceful slumber, pressed a kiss to your bare shoulder before gently tucking you into thick furs. He left the chamber, heading to meet his father.

In the meeting room, Shoto was already present, exchanging a cold smile with his eldest brother. Hawks and the other warriors formed a solemn assembly, awaiting the earl's words.

Natsuo stood nearby, eager to hear what their father had to say and to bid farewell to his brothers.

Endeavor's stern voice echoed through the hall as he issued orders to his sons. "Shoto, Touya, you depart soon. Ensure everything is in order for the journey. You have no time to waste."

Shoto, attempting to be the epitome of politeness, spoke up. "Father, may I suggest we also check the provisions and inspect the gear to ensure nothing is overlooked for the journey?"

Endeavor's gaze shifted to Shoto, a brief nod acknowledging the suggestion. "Very well, Shoto. Attend to the provisions and gear. Dabi, focus on the horses and make sure they are in prime condition. You leave nothing to chance."

Dabi, ever the stoic one, simply nodded in acknowledgment, the weight of his father's expectations settling on his shoulders.

The preparations for the journey became a meticulous dance under Endeavor's watchful eye, each son fulfilling their assigned tasks with a sense of duty ingrained in them by years of training and discipline.

Dabi meticulously checked each horse, ensuring they were in optimal health and prepared for the upcoming journey.

As he worked, Natsuo approached him, a note of concern in his voice. "Be careful, Touya," Natsuo said, his eyes reflecting worry.

Dabi, giving his brother a brief nod, adjusted the long, thick, black fur draping over his shoulders. "I'll. And you, keep your eyes open and make sure everyone is safe and nothing bad happens, understood?"

Natsuo chuckled at the protective tone of his elder brother. "Understood, Touya. Just don't go doing anything reckless."

Dabi flashed a small smirk, a mixture of confidence and assurance. "Reckless? Me? Never." Despite the banter, a hint of camaraderie lingered in their exchange, a silent understanding between the brothers in the face of the impending challenges.

Natsuo ruffled Dabi's stallion's mane, a thoughtful expression on his face. "I hope father knows what he is doing, sending you to a land we've never been to before."

Dabi, continuing to attend to the horses, looked up at his brother. "Apparently, he does. The journey doesn't seem as tough as it sounds," he assured.

As Dabi continued with the preparations for the journey, he turned to Natsuo and asked, "Take good care of Y/N while we're away, will you?"

Natsuo, puzzled by the mention of a name of their thrall, furrowed his brows. "Y/N? Why?"

Dabi smirked and explained, "I freed her. She's my woman now."

Natsuo blinked, a mix of surprise and amusement crossing his face. He smirked smugly, poking his older brother's shoulder. "Well, well, has my brother fallen in love with a woman!?" The revelation caught him off guard, but Natsuo couldn't resist teasing his brother about his newfound connection.

Dabi, his usually stoic expression now tinged with a mix of vulnerability and anger, confirmed, "Yes, Natsuo. I fell in love with her. Any problem with that?"

Natsuo shook his head, a reassuring smile on his face. "No problem, Touya. I'll protect her. You don't have to worry about that. Focus on the trip, and I'll handle things here on your behalf."

A sense of gratitude flickered in Dabi's eyes as he nodded, appreciating the support and understanding from his younger brother.

Touya gracefully mounted his stallion, and Shoto did the same.

As they prepared to depart, Endeavor emerged from the Great Hall. "Bring back as much as you can, and scout around," he ordered, his gaze piercing.

Shoto, ever the dutiful son, assured his father sweetly, "Everything you said will be done, my lord."

They departed in unison, the rhythmic sound of hooves echoing through the settlement.

The horses moved one by one, a procession of warriors embarking on a mission of importance. As they rode, the figures of warriors and their leaders gradually vanished on the horizon, blending with the imposing mountains in the distance.

Dabi, throwing a final glance back at the settlement, silently offered a prayer to their gods for success on the mission. The vast expanse swallowed them, leaving behind the familiar and venturing into the unknown.

You awoke alone in Touya's bed, the furs enveloping you in a warm embrace. Stretching languidly, you shifted, and a blush tinged your cheeks as you became aware of the remnants of wetness and slick covering your inner thighs. With a mix of shyness and self-consciousness, you decided to freshen up.

After cleaning yourself and running a brush through your hair, you prepared for the day. As a free woman with newfound autonomy, uncertainty lingered in your choices. Unsure of what to do, you settled on paying a visit to Hilda.

On your way to your friend, you were unexpectedly intercepted by the earl himself. Endeavor, a commanding presence, stopped you in your tracks. "Come with me, Y/N," he requested, his tone leaving little room for refusal. "I wish to talk to you."

Curiosity and a hint of apprehension danced in your eyes as you followed the earl, the path veering away from your original destination, leaving you to wonder what discussions awaited in the halls of the settlement's leader.

Endeavor, seated on his imposing throne, gestured for you to take a seat on the smaller throne positioned on his left side. Hesitantly, you complied with his request.

Endeavor's stern expression softened slightly as he began to speak. "Touya informed me of what transpired," he stated, and a blush instantly covered your cheeks, a mix of embarrassment and uncertainty coursing through you.

The earl continued, his gaze unwavering. "He freed you. I do not condone such actions, especially considering your status. You are not of royal blood, but as long as you make my son happy, I am inclined to respect that."

You nodded, a mixture of relief and nervousness settling within you. "I assure you, earl Endeavor, my intentions are pure. I mean no harm."

Endeavor, though maintaining his stern demeanor, seemed to consider your words. "Very well," Endeavor declared after a moment. "In such circumstances, if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask the thralls, Hilda, or even me or Natsuo. If you prove your worth, maybe I'll look at you more kindly."

You promised not to be a bother but a valuable asset for the settlement. As the conversation progressed, you gathered the courage to pose a more personal question. "My lord, would you have anything against me fully embracing the worship of your gods?"

Endeavor's initial shock was evident, but after a moment, he smiled at you, nodding in acknowledgment. The acceptance of your desire to align with their religious practices hinted at a potential bridge between your newfound freedom and the intricate dynamics of the settlement. The unspoken understanding between you and the earl carried the potential for a more harmonious coexistence, provided you could prove your dedication and commitment to the settlement's values.

"You wish to step away from your Christian God and embrace our gods?" he asked.

In response, you nodded, meeting his gaze with determination. "Yes, earl Endeavor. I want to embrace the beliefs of this settlement, to become part of the community and honor the gods that are revered here. The day my village was raided, it felt as though my God had abandoned me," you expressed, the weight of that moment etched in the somber tone of your words.

The earl, after a moment of contemplation, surprised you with a geniune smile. He nodded, a gesture of acknowledgment. "Very well. If it brings you closer to this community and my son, then I will respect your choice. The gods, after all, have their own ways." Endeavor considered your newfound interest in embracing the local beliefs and, after a moment, spoke decisively, "I will take you to our seer. She will impart the knowledge you seek. Eventually, you may find yourself visiting Uppsala, a vital religious, economic, and political center in Svealand."

Your eyes lit up with interest at the prospect, and you nodded eagerly, fully intrigued by the idea of exploring such a significant place. Curiosity guiding your words, you asked, "Will I be able to go there once Touya returns?"

Endeavor, after a brief pause, agreed, "Yes, once Touya is back, we can arrange for your visit to Uppsala. It will be an enlightening experience for you."

You nodded at Endeavor, absorbing the significance of the upcoming journey into the settlement's beliefs and practices.

As you settled into the smaller throne, Endeavor looked up at you, a question lingering in his eyes. "Do you know where you're sitting?" he asked.

You replied hesitantly, "Obviously, it's a throne, my lord."

He chuckled, confirming your observation. "Indeed, it is a throne, but it holds a particular importance. This is reserved for the earl's wife, the queen of the settlement."

Your gaze shifted, and you asked cautiously, "Where is your wife then, my lord?"

Endeavor's expression softened, carrying a weight of sorrow. "She passed away after giving birth to Shoto, my youngest son."

You remained silent, acknowledging the gravity of the loss. "I'm so sorry for your family's loss," you expressed.

Endeavor waved his hand dismissively, as if to sweep away the weight of the past. "This is what the gods had prepared for her," he said, a touch of acceptance in his voice. "I miss her wisdom every day." He then looked at you, his gaze steady. "I let you sit here because, eventually, this place will belong to you."

You blinked, shocked by the unexpected revelation. "To me?" you asked, seeking more details. "I-I don't understand, my lord…"

Endeavor nodded, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. "Yes." Endeavor leaned in, his voice lowered as he shared a revelation with you. "Since you are my eldest son's woman, it is likely that Touya will want to marry you one day." He paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. "And I have already chosen Touya as my legitimate heir. Once I am gone, he will take over the throne."

You were shocked by the revelation, and you whispered in response, "But from what I observed, I was fully convinced you would want Shoto to inherit the throne, my lord…"

Endeavor sighed, a mixture of regret and remorse in his eyes. He began to share the mistakes of his past, confessing to an attempt on Touya's life when he was a child, influenced by the wrong people. The consequence was the multitude of scars that adorned Touya's body, a lasting mark from a hot, boiling tar. "After all these years," Endeavor continued, "and witnessing Touya's growth, even though it was much harder for him due to his past and vulnerabilities, I have come to the conclusion that there is no other candidate for the throne than my eldest son. Shoto is full of passion, yes, but he is also very unsorted, having too many ideas and never fully indulging in anything but quick, meaningless affairs." The earl's admission offered a glimpse into the complexities of his decisions, revealing the burdens of the past and the intricate dynamics within the royal family.

As the revelation unfolded, a mix of emotions churned within you. The realization that Touya would be as shocked as you, having believed all along that his father saw him merely as a warrior, added a layer of complexity to the unfolding dynamics within the royal family.

You turned to Endeavor, the weight of the situation settling in, and expressed, "Whatever you decide, I will condone, my lord."

Endeavor's response was a smile, a gesture that softened his stern features. His rough, huge hand reached out, gently caressing your blushed cheek. "I think I'm starting to understand what Touya sees in you," he admitted. "You remind me a lot of my wife. You're very kind, and you seem to carry a wisdom I might not comprehend." Endeavor's gaze held a mixture of seriousness and earnestness as he spoke, "I ask you to be good to Touya. He deserves the world I couldn't provide him with."

The horses moved steadily through the wilderness, Dabi and Shoto riding side by side. The rhythmic sound of hooves on the earth beneath echoed in the quiet expanse around them. Hawks and the other warriors trailed at a distance, granting the brothers a semblance of privacy.

Shoto, breaking the silence, turned to his older brother. "So, how is it to possess a thrall?" he inquired, a curious glint in his mismatched eyes.

Dabi, eyes fixed on the distant horizon, remained silent.

The younger brother, ever probing, continued with a wry tone, "Is she better than the whore you laid with before?"

Dabi's jaw clenched, and for a moment, he maintained his stoic composure. However, the barb proved to be too much, and he finally snapped back at Shoto, his tone sharp and cold, "Watch your tongue, Shoto. She's not just a possession, and you will treat her with respect." The intensity in his words mirrored the protective edge that had developed over the time he spent with you.

Shoto chuckled dismissively. "Why would I respect a thrall? She's nothing but our slave."

"I freed her," Touya retorted sharply, his voice carrying a harsh edge. "So she's not your slave anymore."

Shoto, not entirely convinced by his brother's words, chuckled again. However, when he caught the stern gaze from Touya, he groaned in frustration, relenting but not without adding a snarky, awfully bad comment under his breath. "Oh, brother, you've fallen so low that you bedded a thrall and freed her just because she was good in bed and made doe-eyes at you. Pathetic."

Touya, his patience wearing thin, warned Shoto sharply, "Don't say anything more about Y/N. I won't hesitate to hurt you, Shoto."

Shoto, unfazed and ever mocking, responded with a smirk, "Hurt me? Come on, Touya, you're just defending your little pet. I didn't know you could get so attached to a mere thrall."

Touya's jaw clenched, his restraint visibly tested by his younger brother's taunts.

Their exchange was abruptly interrupted by a loud howling in the distance, a haunting sound that echoed through the wilderness. The mournful cry carried an eerie resonance, adding an ominous atmosphere to the already tense scene between the brothers. As the sun began its descent down the horizon, casting long shadows and painting the sky with hues of orange and red, the howling persisted.

"Wolves," Touya said carefully, his eyes scanning the surroundings. "We should set up camp here. It's too risky to ride further."

Shoto, involuntarily agreeing with Touya, nodded in acknowledgment.

As the camp took shape, Touya decided to rest in his tent. Lying on the furs, he closed his eyes, allowing the sounds of nature and the quietness of the night to envelop him. The occasional chatter of their warriors echoed in the background. Touya's thoughts drifted to you, and as he drifted into sleep, he envisioned you through the canvas of his imagination.

heathen wolves: @queenkhepri @indignant-alpaca @misafiryanki @roast-toast @within-eyesight @crystalwolfblog @haseki-huricihan @violet-forgetmenot @dagger-dragger @smartspot

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dmwrites · 1 year

Text

Martyn was yelling. Martyn was yelling and coming at Impulse with a desperation and fury that rooted him to the spot. It didn’t make sense, Martyn was… cheating. Scott was dead, gone in a flash of fire that Impulse couldn’t even begin to comprehend. And he was facing down a man who was all greens and yellows and reds and-

There was a slice through the air, a pain so brief it might have been imagined, and then-

“I’m so proud of you, homie buddy!”

“For goodness sake, Skizz, put on a shirt!”

Impulse tried to extract himself from Skizz’s chest, but his friend only pulled him closer.

“Let him breathe a little, Skizz, he just died, after all.” Tango’s voice floated up somewhere to the left of him, and he felt a pat on the back. “Nice work, man, second place ain’t too bad.”

Skizz let Impulse go, finally, and Impulse was instantly being congratulated by his other friends, Scott giving him a distracted smile, Pearl sticking out her tongue before hugging him tight.

“You’re a good guy, Impulse. Thanks for sticking by me.” Etho came over and clapped Impulse on the shoulder, a small smile in his voice and a twinkle in his eye. “You fought well.”

“Thanks, man.” Impulse beamed at him. “You did too. Not washed up at all.” He chuckled, and Etho grumbled good-naturedly before wandering back over to The Clockers.

Skizz was standing next to him still, almost vibrating with energy.

“You’re being ridiculous.” Impulse told Skizz. “You should be congratulating Martyn when he dies. Or Scott, for that matter- there was no way I would have won even if we’d all played fair.”

“Come, walk and talk with me, buddy.” Skizz said, floating in the direction of the TIES tower.

They passed by the small group around Grian, who were watching Martyn below, still alive and on the ground. He caught a bit of conversation as they passed.

“We should probably slash-kill, G. Game’s over.”

“No, let’s leave him for a moment.” Grian mumbled, watching Martyn with a troubled look on his face.

The tower was empty, and Skizz and Impulse perched on the edge of Skynet, watching the other dead players float around.

“Dude, I said it once, but I’ll say it again- I am so proud of you. You’re like a warrior, man!” Skizz crowed.

“But I didn’t win!” Impulse exclaimed, although he couldn’t help but smile at Skizz’s enthusiasm.

“What- are you kidding me, dude! I told you- all of you before I died- team TIES gets top three, and you got to second place!”

“Well, second is a poor replacement for first…” Impulse grumbled.

“You know what, dude?” Skizz said, snapping his fingers, “I never did get to your affirmation, did I?”

“No, but I’m not, like, offended.” Impulse replied.

Skizz cleared his throat. “Impulsesv, my bestest friend-”

“You don’t have to do this, I’ll be okay without my affirmation.” Impulse interrupted.

“Shut your face and let me say nice things!” Skizz waved his hand dramatically at Impulse to make him shut up. “Impulse, my friend. You know, when I was doing these affirmations, I had to study people, even the ones I knew before. But you… it was easy to come up with the words. Perseverance. Focus. God, man, look at what you did. You wanted to win, and the way you hunted, killed… it was incredible. You never stopped, and I could tell how badly you wanted to win. You put your mind to it and you just go, man. If death herself hasn’t stopped you, I’m sure you would have walked right through Martyn’s axe to get the win.”

Impulse laughed. “I think you’ve been hanging out in the afterlife for too long, man, you are making less sense with every sentence.”

“I’m just proud of you, man.” Skizz smiled.

“Careful, Skizz,” Impulse teased, “people are gonna start thinking you’re some kind of angel or something, with how nice you’re being.”

“Ha! Whatever, dude.”

Skizz and Impulse started trying to elbow each other off of Skynet, laughing and waiting for Martyn’s life to end. The sun was setting, and there was that bittersweet taste of second place that settled heavy on Impulse’s tongue. Not good, not bad, but at the end of the day, there were always people who loved him, so it didn’t really matter.

#just a small thing I was working on #basically me talking thru Skizz bc I’m super proud of impulse #limited life spoilers #limited life #impulsesv #skizzleman #long post

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iwaasfairy · 2 years

Text

┌─ “ „ SLICE ─┐

tw. noncon ! , pseudo-cest, coercion, explicit gore ! , a lot of blood, body horror, side character death, serial murders, yandere, bodily harm, explicit descriptions of violence wordcount. 6.7k

a/n. day 3 of kinktober ♡♡♡ this counts for all of my fics, but for this one I feel like i have to say it extra loud, please read the warnings. i normally don't write stuff quite this explicit, and i really wanted to push myself a little with this one, and I know this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea.

also, I hope I don't have to say this, but I'm not trying to glorify anything that happens in this fic. it's the closest to horror i'll probably get in my work, and it's meant to be horror. I'm not trying to romanticize this. inspired by the horror movies i've been watching and thank you miss @seijorhi for betaing. i hope you like this fic because i really liked writing it!! mwuah!

kuroo tetsuro x fem!reader

Toughness isn’t a trait that is well-respected enough in his humble opinion. It’s not the ability to claw your way out of a hole or the ability or relate that makes a person, but the ability to endure. It’s how he was raised, how he’s been since he was a child— and it’s the toughness that people have over any other living thing that he might just appreciate most about the human experience. It’s maybe no wonder then that he loves watching the toughness in people crawl out of them like a slow seep of oil spilling into a lake— polluting everything around it. After a while of lasting through pain, everything else rots away, and the only light left in people's eyes often is that they’ve endured this long.

It’s almost victorious, really; to watch it start to break out in people. There’s an art to it. A magic.

Until he snuffs that dying light out, of course.

It’s not like he doesn’t respect their struggle. But if this hunger is his cross to bear, then he’ll bear it. It’s one he’ll be damned to fuck up with some misplaced mercy. Mercy only causes liabilities. His scarred hands are cold as he slips the panties into his pant pocket, rubbing the wet fabric between his fingers, before he moves and wraps his hands around the wooden handle to lift it over his shoulder, before bringing it down again with sickening efficiency. The axe silences the last of the pitiful, pained humming in the air— with a heavy thump of bone giving in, it’s splattered across the polished stone of the bank. There’s not much left of her to identify.

And the water will clean it out as the level rises again. But still he takes a moment to sit by her side, staring out over the soft waves of the river, and takes a deep, long breath of the copper-tasting air. Wet blood drips off the blade of the axe along the thick coat of molasses-like proof of the ones before, and creates a perfectly shallow pool of red that runs down all the way to the water, before he lets the handle drop entirely from his grasp.

His breath comes out in floaty, little clouds that disperse so easily into the cold, and make his lashes damp. Away from all the bustle of the city, there’s an unmistakable peace that rings like home. It’s nice and quiet out here.

You remember losing your left front tooth to an almost uncanny amount. Among other things, it was the last truly long summer in Tokyo.

Your eyes are wide as you’re stood in the living room with your hands fisted into your skirt and your mouth open as Kenma’s fingers prod around your gums. Even though he washed his hands… you can’t help but pout and frown. “Nw- ii—dan,” you mumble softly, and watch as he pulls his fingers out with a grimace and wipes them on his shirt.

“Yeah, yeah, give me a minute,” the brunet sighs, then slips the band around his wrist to tie his hair out of the way and sits back onto the back of the couch. “How’d this happen in the first place?” He prompts you to open your mouth again, watching with a slight smile as you loll your tongue out like a dog and try to speak with your mouth open, making a noise as your spit goes everywhere. “Put your tongue back, idiot. You’ll choke.”

“Bi—ss- an app—e -w.”

Kenma nii takes a deep breath as his face goes back to one of concentration, and you try your best to hold the instinct to wiggle your loose tooth like it’s a game. You’d get in Kenma’s way— and it’s plenty hard to get his help in the first place. But your brother seems focused enough on the task, if a little annoyed, even with his hands full of your spit. You’ll have to remember to thank him later. He fiddles around with it for a little more, before letting out an annoyed sound. “I can’t get a good grip on it.”

“I can try.”

Kuroo san speaks up from where he’s sat on the couch facing you two, staring at the way your face is scrunched up, half in amusement, half in concern. His big eyes are already pinpointing the issue in a way that only a meticulous person like he can, tongue trapped between his teeth. He only gets a shrug out of Kenma, but is quick enough to put the volleyball down and get up to where you’re standing. The noiret’s long legs carry him close, before he puts one hand on his knee to crouch down to you and pull you a few steps toward him.

And though Kuroo san is only a year older than your big brother, you’ve always found it somewhat odd to understand. For all the things that make them get along, they’re extremely different. Kuroo’s bright and bold and prods at people’s borders for sport. And well, Kenma… doesn’t. You’ve never really seen Kuroo as a neighborhood friend. He’s more like your big brother’s big brother, if anything. He spent the last three summers at your house, has slept over more times than you can count too. And you can count high.

His long legs bend until you’re just about face to face, and Kuroo’s natural smile puts you at ease just as well as Kenma can. Your big brother who you glance over to for confirmation, and who’s already let his attention go back to his game as he plops down into the couch. “No need to get comfortable, Kenma,” Kuroo says quickly, receiving a groan from the younger boy— but he doesn’t give it more attention. Instead he pats you on the head and then motions to his shoulder. “Hold on to me real tight, m‘kay? There’s going to be a little pinch.” You fist your hand into Kuroo’s red jacket automatically at his prompting, before he smiles and you mirror it.

And he then slides his thumb along your lip to pull it upward a little, before looking up at you. “Ready?” You nod before you think. Kuroo san’s quick to wipe his hands on his pants, breathe a soft ‘1, 2, 3,’ and just as easily yank the dangling tooth out of your skull with only a little noise of acknowledgement. “O~kay.” It’s more than a little pinch. It hurts. Hurts and feels weird and gross all at once.

The waterworks are activated before you can even think about it, tasting blood and salty tears all over your tongue as Kuroo inspects the damage. “Don’t cry, you did great!” He walks to the kitchen to fish the cupboards for a handkerchief, sticking it quickly under the tap before coming back to you with big steps. And though you’re still crying, his voice is pleasant as he nudges your face his way. “You’re fine, little bug, come here.” The blood is cleaned up and the rag pressed against it, and you hold it dutifully in place as he leans to pick you up and swings you onto his hip with a smile. He’s just … pleasant. You can’t explain it any better.

“Wanna watch your niisan and Tetsuro play?” he asks.

Again you find yourself nodding, and wipe your wet lashes— and spend the rest of that day watching the older boys play in the yard for the last free days before Kenma will be starting highschool. And swing your legs left and right each time either of them ask for some water, before hopping up and sprinting over with a small smile. You remember liking the heat of Tetsuro’s hand on your head, and the way your big brother lifts you into his neck with an almost-grin as he manages to make the older boy miss. You remember the split second of pure bliss falling asleep in a heap on the lawn with the both of them tuckered out from practice.

It’s only a couple days later they find the first girl, a middle schooler barely a few years your senior.

You only remember bits and pieces of the ones afterward. Life didn’t change too much for you, after all, but your parents were more vigilant after that. You weren’t allowed to go out without taking one of the guys with you, and Kenma would often walk you back from school. You were probably too young to understand fully why your mom would watch you come and go with such a concerned look on her face. She was worried… it was only natural.

But you suppose all that worrying didn’t save the next girl they found, because there was a next.

Another middle schooler, younger this time. There’s a memorial for her at the school across town, and though you don’t have to attend, her picture is plastered everywhere over your own school too. You can’t help but find something familiar in the soft smile, all bright eyed and friendly.

And you cling a little harder to Kenma’s hand that evening when you walk, leaning your head against his arm.

You also recall when the announcement of an evening curfew came blasting from the tv and how everyone around the table went a bit quieter. You didn’t use to eat dinner with the device playing before, but… you can’t help a parent’s worry. Your own happy chattering slowly drops off when even Kenma across from you turns to listen, and Kuroo falls quiet at the head of the table; your mom going a bit paler in the cheeks. ‘This morning, another young girl— Due to the recent events— curfew,’ only parts of it really enter the whirlwind of thoughts. Because you might not be old enough to fully understand, but you do see the way your mom stares at you with a sort of barely-hidden glaze, and how your father takes her hand to squeeze it.

Even Kenma nii, the world’s most unshakable person in your mind, puts his utensils down to get up for some water. It’s only Kuroo who dares break the awkward silence by clearing his voice, and saying the thing everyone’s thinking. “What a load of shit.” It lingers in the room like a badly worded joke, but you can tell, your mom agrees. “Instead of finding the guy doing it…” He doesn’t bother to hide the grimace as he scoops some more rice into his bowl, and Kenma returns to the table.

“Well, hopefully they will, soon.” Then your big brother pauses for a second, before he reaches over the table to pinch your nose softly, and sends you a hint of a smile. It’s starting to become a common sight, that melancholic expression people have when talking to you. The poor girl they show is yet another girl close enough to your age to make your chest feel a bit tighter, staring up at the tv as the reporter rambles. She’s cute, has the same pretty eyes as the last. She also reminds you a little of yourself— and that; that’s the thing that sets goosebumps erupting all over your skin. Biting your lip, picking at the ends of your hair for some kind of distraction.

You only look back down from the screen when Kuroo’s pinky softly brushes your own and pulls you back down to earth, and his golden eyes flick over your expression with a sad understanding, before he properly takes your hand to squeeze it.

Your mom is less good at concealing her concern, and the almost constant furrow in her brows doesn’t stir as the news finally moves on. Her pretty features are scrunched up as she forces a bit of food onto her fork. “Tetsuro kun, how about you sleep over? I don’t want you to go walking home alone tonight.”

It’s that night you stumble into the bathroom in the late hours to find the light on. As you peek in, you watch how Kuroo’s staring in the mirror with his hair a mess, no shirt, and seems so lost in thought he doesn’t even notice you until you push open the door further. “Kuroo san?”

His eyes narrow for just a moment, before he takes a deep breath at the sight of your form in the doorway. “Oh, it’s you. I… got up for a drink, and then I couldn’t sleep. A lot on my mind, you know.” His handsome face is a little puffy from rest, you can tell. He turns to you halfway to grin. “You’re a little overthinker too, hm? Did you know you talk when you’re dreaming?” You don’t know what to say to that, but it heats up your cheeks enough to make you feel, and look, doubly flustered.

“No, I didn’t… And I gotta pee, so-” You trail off as you watch Kuroo dry off his hands with slow, meticulous motions, before he hums. There’s scars all over his hands. Small ones, but also long lines like gashes, or scratched open skin, some newer than others. It makes for a pretty painful sight, criss crossed all over his palms, fingers, wrists. When he notices you stare, he only puts the towel away, but leaves his hands outstretched as if presenting them to you.

“Ah… scars from… receiving practice.” He’s smiling, but there’s something … It’s weird. You feel weird, hair on your arms standing up. It’s just the dark. It’s the dark. “Not pretty, is it? Looks a little scary.” Kuroo continues when you don’t speak, and wiggles his fingers.

But his eyes are so dim in this light you can’t read them, even zeroed in on your face. And your stomach turns, clearly upset. The news really is making you all anxious. And you’ve seen Kuroo in just as little clothing before, at the pool and at the beach, but… Your oversized, borrowed Nintendo shirt feels too sheer for how close the black haired boy is standing, or how rapidly your heart is patterning in your chest. Even if- he’s like a big brother- even if you know Kuroo doesn’t think like that, you can’t help but stare. And he must notice, because he slowly blinks. “What are you thinking?”

As he grabs the door handle, you back up to let him pass instinctively, and shake your head left to right. “Oh, just… It’s how you are, isn’t it? You always do things as well as you can.” It’s not a good answer, really, but Kuroo seems to take comfort in it anyway, and rests his hand onto your shoulder. Before he slides it up along your collarbone and up to your throat ever so slowly, gripping you there as if to hold you in place. You don’t dare breathe, let alone move as he seems to take all the time in the world appraising you, swiping his thumb along the vulnerable area.

“Give me a kiss?” You’re used to giving both of them goodnight kisses… but your muscles strain as you slowly press a peck to his soft cheek, before allowing him to wrap his other arm around your shoulders. He hums, sinks to your level to rest his lips to your forehead, and takes another long breath against your frozen state. He finally lets go after a few more frozen breaths, and wishes you goodnight for a second time that evening.

And it’s late, and definitely Kuroo looks a bit out of it, but you can’t calm down even in the safety of your own bed. That Kuroo is only one room over.

You don’t get much sleep that night.

“Tetsuro aniki~” you groan as the guy, who towers over you at the best of moments, wraps his long fingers around your hand and sways it left and right. His eyes shine with a soft glitter in the resting light of the afternoon, casting a golden edge around his figure. “I promised mom I’d head straight ho~me. And Kenma asked me to watch him beat the final boss too, so—”

“I’ll walk you home in a second,” Kuroo swears, dark hair a sweeping mess over his one eye. You kinda want to brush it back, and smack him in the back of the head for hauling you around. But you don’t, evidently, instead readjusting your bookbag and starting to fall into a lazy walk behind him as his grin goes from excited to triumphant so easily. As your eyes track the way his pants legs move with every step, you can’t help but giggle that he’s about to outgrow his highschool uniform. Not that he’ll need it for very much longer anyway. In a few months he’ll be going off to college, and then only months after that Kenma too. It’ll be weird.

You two walk in silence until you get to the less crowded streets of the Tokyo outskirts, and then a little past that too. It’s more open here, more room to breathe, to think. You know Tetsuro comes here often for his runs, and you can kind of see why. It’s in the way the lowering sun catches the river all the way along to the horizon, glittering brilliantly with golden and orange streaks. You let him pull you to a halt and push some quarters into a vending machine, as he lifts his shoulders and then drops them again. “Have you ever had a secret?” He doesn’t look at you while grabbing the drinks out of the tray, or even when he hands one to you and pops open the other.

But you suck your tongue and think, before opening your own. You childishly put your hand on your hip, and tilt your head. “If you’re trying to get me to air out my secrets it’s not going to work.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. Although…” Tetsuro chuckles, before glancing up at you. His sharp eyes have a frightening intensity for just a flash of a second, but it’s gone by the time he looks aside. “No, no, I’m being serious,” he confirms, and that smart mouth pulls up at the corners, “for now.”

“Hmm, well then. Are you thinking of any secret in particular?”

There’s a long silence. Filled with soft chirps of birds and wind, but long, long enough to have your mouth break open a sliver. Before you can speak though, the noiret blinks and stretches his arms above his head. “Nope.” He pops the ‘p’ and smiles, and though it crinkles the sides of his eyes, you can’t help but feel like… there’s something dishonest about it. “Just thinking out loud.” He shrugs, and slurps at the can a little too obnoxiously, before walking back over to you to sit down on one of the street railings, long legs tucked under himself. “Let’s say you had a hypothetical secret though, an important one.”

“Mhm,” you respond.

“Then you wouldn’t tell anyone that secret, would you?”

There’s a few seconds of silence again, but this time you dare look up at Kuroo, focusing on the way his eyes travel along the landmarks of your face. It’s awfully intimate. You can’t help but think Kenma wouldn’t like this, whatever it is. “I guess it depends on what the secret is, and who it’s affecting. I don’t think I could keep a secret from nii nii, at the very least.” Tetsuro’s golden eyes glide down to your mouth as you talk, before he chuckles again, bites his lip, then rubs his hand along his chin. And hops off of the bar, swinging his arms around like he’s nervous. You don’t get it. “What?”

“You’re a clever one,” is all Tetsuro responds, pillowy lips keeping a soft smile. Then he walks back over to you with all his height and lean but defined muscle, so much more intense than usual. “You really are clever.” He leans down and grabs your face between his two hands to look into your eyes, before continuing in a softer tone as your heart beats out of control once again. “I like that about you.”

You hear an unfortunate amount about the next two girls found in the months following, and each fact people happen to mention over drinks, in the paper, while walking along the street makes you wish everyone would just shut up. Defiled and bruised, strangled, and skulls bashed in by a sharp, heavy object. They show the pictures on the news, not the gruesome ones, but enough of them to turn your stomach and make you want to dry heave on the lawn to get the taste out your mouth. One of the girls had been dead for almost 6 weeks, they estimated, was fished out of the river naked and blue and headless. You can only wonder why the hell it took them so long to find her, but you don’t stick around long enough to hear. A terrible fate. The pictures of their smiling faces are always just as bad though. It’s uncanny. Same hair, same eyes, similar age and same general shape—

Looking in the mirror is so much harder that night, pulling your hair down from your ponytail. Because you just can’t shake the feeling that… you’d fit his type, if he were to ever see you walking around Tokyo.

But you get lucky, apparently. Because for all the stories and morbid reminiscing people seem to love doing, you never run into the freak. And though you feel sorry for the victims, the fear slowly starts fading. Winter comes and passes, and by spring, Kuroo moves into his college dorms. You can tell it takes a toll on Kenma. You can’t lie and say you don’t miss him either. Everything’s different for you too, though. After the six girls in those three tense years, the culprit suddenly seems to vanish into thin air. One month goes by, four, eight, and there’s no more trace of him— no more crippling fear about having to wear a skirt to school, or glaring at every person you walk by.

Of course, any trail the police go after soon goes cold, and the loss of those girls lingers.

You’re already eighteen when you see Kuroo again for the first time in years… and resort to flinging yourself around his neck with a smile and a well deserved congratulations. His graduate cap looks good on him, as does the smile painted on his pretty lips. Kenma’s familiar scowl is nowhere to be found despite swearing up and down that rooming with Kuroo has been an absolute nightmare, and the blooming bouquet that Tetsuro has tucked under his arm is only half as bright and wonderful as he is.

As your family and Tetsuro’s mom head off to drive to a restaurant to celebrate, you stay behind with him for a little longer, watching. The boy you knew looks so different now. The same, but entirely foreign too. You don’t illusion yourself to think that he stayed the same in his years away, and neither did you for that matter. You can tell in the way he can’t seem to stop looking at you, that Tetsuro sees it too. As you walk side by side, the familiar banter also comes quickly. You’re a lot sharper now than you used to be. Better able to match his pace, and his arm is warm when he leans into you with a laugh. “No, no— but, you’ve always been something special.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He doesn’t hesitate, just stares at your visage again. “You’ve always been… different to me, I don’t know. Since before I left, even.” You know your face is going hot in the cheeks, but there’s not a single thing you can do to stop it. It’s just… he smells so nice, familiar, and yet so much more grown, more mature than he was. He looks it too, buffed up a lot since middle and highschool— and though he was always huge compared to you, he feels even bigger. “You’ve changed so much though. Grew into yourself. It looks good on you,” he seems to mirror your thoughts, and sends your skin up in flames at that.

You let it hang in the air without a word though, because really, there’s nothing for you to say, right? He’s Kenma nii’s best friend. His longest lasting companion. Kuroo’s always been good at keeping you, and the conversation, going, so he breezes over it too. “Oh, I bought a house.”

“You bought a house?”

“Sure did,” he smiles, sliding his large hand around in his back pocket to pick out a set of keys that he presents to you a little too proudly.

But you’re more than glad to indulge him. “Shut up, no way. You capitalist scumbag.” Kuroo laughs with his whole body, and lets the joy crinkle up his eyes as his black mop of hair sweeps along his brows— before his hand lands alongside yours, and picks it up into his. Fingers tangle with yours so easily you’re almost lulled into believing that it really isn’t a big deal at all. But you know better.

“You’ll get it when you see the place.” Though you try to pull your hand out of his, he squeezes it a little harder when he notices, and doesn’t let his grin fade. “What? I can’t hold your hand?”

“Of course you can, but… I don’t know.”

“If you don’t know, then relax. Stop worrying.” You find yourself listening, much to Tetsuro’s amusement. He mulls the next words over for a few more seconds, before leaning into your ear much too close, and letting his lips brush the shell of your ear. “I missed having you around to drive me crazy.” Kenma nii is going to kill you for the thoughts you’re having.

You’re propped up onto the kitchen counter as Tetsuro talks, pouring more champagne, and most of the guilt is slowly melting away the longer the night goes on. Kenma had to get back home to stream a couple hours ago, and the family all went back right after dinner already— and you’re still giggling along with the noiret as he tells any story that comes to him from his time away. It’s damn near impossible not to get swept up in the excitement at the prospect of decorating, and throwing housewarming parties, and watching him start a real ‘grown up’ life.

“If you’re nice to me, I’ll allow you to take one of the rooms while you’re in uni,” he chuckles, his pretty mouth reaching at the glass for another sip. He’s close enough for you to smell his cologne and see each of the sparse freckles on his face, and how each passing second seems to bring him closer. So you laugh along before hopping off the counter, just to put some space between the two of you. Your hands are jittery, and brain fuzzy, and though it’s still Tetsuro aniki, you can’t get around the fact that things have changed.

So you turn and smile, walking backwards. “I’m going to go check out the rooms.”

“Hey,” he breathes, turning over his shoulder as you walk out of the living room, chuckling softly. “Don’t just go walking around another person’s house.”

“You tempted me with the room suggestion,” you call over your shoulder, swinging your arms as you walk down the hall and find the first door.

“Don’t snoop!” Kuroo laughs again, but doesn’t make any more effort to stop you. The first room is a bathroom you've already used earlier. But the hall continues around the corner. And you can hear Kuroo put away the champagne in the kitchen, so you have no doubt he’ll come after you in a second. You’re not actually snooping. The next door you open is a bedroom, neatly decorated, and instantly guess this must be his room. The room across from it is wide open and clean, only a couch and a tv placed in the corner for now, and some moving boxes shoved out of the way under the large window.

You move on to the next door to find a smaller little corner room, and look around to see even more moving stuff, closets not yet set up, a dismantled gaming desk, buckets of cables, the works. His home improvement gear and dumbbells are all strewn across the floor too. And at the end of the room, there’s another smaller little door, that you yank open for a broom closet, or maybe a small corner with a washing machine.

You hear Kuroo call your name from in the house. “Where are you?”

Everything stops.

Just that the air goes so cold you can barely feel your hands, or your face. Blood seeps from rags tossed into the old, mechanical sink, and a thick smell of iron and rot meets your nose. And sticky blood everywhere, on the floors, splattered on the wall, coating wooden furniture. There’s something that vaguely resembles a lower half, blood seeping from the holes in the almost-plastic like flesh. And her. The small room has no light, but you can recognize a human person when you need to.

The figure has her legs folded to fit the small space, eyes red and irritated and glazed with almost milky tears, and the side of her face has a gash from the top of her head down to her jaw deep enough to see bone. You stumble back and try not to gag, the nauseous feeling crawling down to your stomach and twisting. Her chest is still moving, but faintly, barely going up before it collapses with a stuttering, painful weeze. You want to sit down. You want to run. You want the horrible spinning in your head to stop. Her clothing is almost all ripped to shreds and stained dark blackish-brown, and with the way she’s positioned, you can also see… the raw, sticky, irritated mess that was left of her upper thighs.

“Oh my god,” you manage to whisper, before taking a deep breath and forcing your shaky legs to move towards her.

Your first instinct is to bend and grab at her face, trying to press on the wound; but the previously docile girl is quick to swing her arm and nick you with something sharp as she screams a horrible, animal-like squeal and slices your palm open. Dark blood sprays, you fall, the girl scrambles up over you. She doesn’t get far before she tumbles over with a gurgling, heart-bleeding noise, but gets to the door and starts dragging herself through the hall. You stare at your shaking palm in just as much shock, warm blood dripping down in thick drops from your wrist and fingers— but your legs carry you towards the noise anyway. You want to help. You want to help her, or she’ll die. Your blood is pounding against your skull. Everything else is blurred. Everything else is buzzing and vibrating with this awful noise of blaring anxiety.

You hear your name only vaguely, following down the dragged path of blood along the pristine wooden tiling, before you get to where she’s collapsed against the wall, and is breathing through the bubbling blood that spills from her mouth. There’s an awful, broken, pinched moan coming from her- like that of an animal that’s been left to the vultures. But you still put your hands under her arm and try to help her up, now starting to really feel the absolute searing pain of your hand with a pitched groan. It hurts. It hurts so much, and you’re so fucking shaky you’ve completely disoriented yourself. “It’s gonna be… oka—hngg,” you whine as your open wound moves around, you can feel it—

Suddenly, she pushes herself along on your body and tries to set off into another hobbled spurt, but is yanked back by her hair, before she’s shoved hard to the floor. She collapses into a sad heap, and a loud noise makes you jump. Her legs and arms fall limp instantly as the axe connects with a sickening noise, and blood splatters all over the room. It lifts again, dripping, and lands with a frightening amount of force— into the front of her head again.

The wet squelch doesn’t have anything over the crack of her skull and jaw being shattered, and the mess the red-coated axe makes of the lower half of her face, red blood and muck everywhere. You think you scream while you’re gagging— but you can’t hear it over the echo and the pounding and the terror. Your eyes are wide and bug-like as your legs give out and you drop back onto your ass, and the scene makes a big, round pool of blood on the floor.

“Shit,” he sighs out of breath, heaving over and resting his hands on his knees, “I forgot she was in there.” A soft sigh, and a dry chuckle. “Fuck.”

Your joints are locked, and your face is wet and hot and you’re sucking in more air than you can handle, as Kuroo— your Kuroo— straightens up, and looks around the room for you. He spots the gash in your hand first, because his relief just as quickly snaps into an expression of pure disgust as he looks at the heap of flesh and blood before him, her legs strewn wide open and battered body sadly left before him. And spits on it, kicking hard against her hip and sending the remains of her rolling onto the plush carpet. “Fucking bitch.” He lets the handle drop with a wooden clang, and rubs his face though. “Come here, baby, let me take a look.”

Your gasping isn’t enough to get him away from you, but you’re physically unable to do anything but lay there in terror, grasping your palm against the pain. Even with the threat of death kneeling before you, you can’t do more than sputter through your tears, vision completely wobbly and blurry. His gentle smile isn’t lost on you though, and you take a deep, wheezed breath. “You… you-y- ng-you—”

“Hey, hey, I’m doing this for you, okay? In all this time, I haven’t hurt you once. I haven’t hurt you once, have I? This is so I don’t hurt you, baby,” he says it all so casually, like anything he’s saying is making any sense at all; with his cheek red with splatters of blood, and his eyes a dark, dark pupil taking over the normally light irises. “It’s because I love you, you know that.” There’s so much on your mind. Your parents, Kenma, your memories— all of it makes a thick wrecking ball that slams into you so hard it knocks the air out of you.

It was him. All of them.

All those years… it was… You’re gonna puke. You can’t get enough air into your lungs to, or speak, or scream. You don’t want to die. You’ve spent your entire childhood afraid of a shadow around the corner, even though he was— Tetsuro puts his hands under your arms to pull you up from the floor in one fell swoop and places you on the couch, walking straight past the girl he brutalized to stare at your quivering lips and teary eyes, before taking a deep, long breath.

And though he smiles, there’s no gentleness there. None of the things you found so attractive about him just mere minutes ago. It’s nauseating, a vile, bitter feeling that makes your tongue feel like lead. “I feel this hunger towards you, you know,” he explains, gripping your hurt hand in his to inspect the flesh wound some more. “It’s, it’s really intense— and- and I don’t really know what to do with myself when I’m around you.” He leans in, long lashes basically brushing yours as he hovers his mouth over yours. “It’s not gonna be you though, ever. I swear, I’ll make sure of it. I just… want you so bad.”

His pink tongue swipes over his lips to get rid of the drying blood, before he pushes a soft kiss to your lips. “I want you.” When you don’t respond, his mouth crashes to yours, laying you down under him and letting his hand slide along your side as his tongue meets yours and he lets out a long moan into your mouth. “Oh, fuck. You get me so hard so quick.” His tongue is glad to claim anything it can take, even though you’re not moving, and huffing terrified whimpers into his mouth— it’s like it barely even registers.

He nudges your face up to his to kiss you messily, then down your neck as if following the trail of your tears, and to your collarbones. He props you up to hold your limp body against himself, and rolls his hips into you with a soft groan. “S-shit, good- g-girl. You feel me?” You do. His cock, even pressed against you through layers of clothing, is hard and swollen as he pushes his hips into you with needy motions, kisses along your ear, sucking marks into your throat. It rubs your pussy through your leggings, and makes your puffy cunt feel warm. It’s sickening that it seems to act completely without your doing— because you don’t want this.

If you could do any more right now than lay there and take it, you’d be clawing out of the window the second you could. Whatever fight it takes. But you’re frozen in miserable fear and your treacherous pussy is taking his rolling hips like it’s good enough. The press of his cock, and then his fingers over your pelvic area is too much, soft presses against the top of your slit exchanged for harder, direct touches as he thumbs at your clit. He knows what he’s doing, kissing your lips with softer, lazier kisses as he’s got you in his arms. “My sweet, little girl, you’re so fucking pretty. I’ll make you cum so hard you stop worrying.” He picks at the band of your pants, before slipping it over the curve of your ass and pulling them, and your underwear halfway down your legs.

There’s a cheeky smile on his lips as he pulls back to watch you, and groans long and hard at the sight of you. “You want my mouth or my cock?” He pulls your pussy open to rub the glossy wetness around, and grinds his cock against the inside of your push thighs a few more times, before breathing out your name. “You want to come on Tetsuro nii’s cock?” Your head hurts, and the way he spits on your pussy and rubs your clit up and down is so filthy and distracting you can barely take it.

“Tetsu-t-suro,” you manage to breathe out just a desperate whimper, but it has him groaning and gripping his cock through his slacks, then quickly shuffling them off down his thick thighs.

“I know, baby, I’ve got you. Gonna eat you out after, okay?” He pumps his heavy cock a few times up, before pressing the head to your warm hole. The head is so hot and spongy, and he rubs it down your slit and back up with almost scary patience. Because his eyes are wild and anything but patient, as he leans down to grab your cheeks and plant another kiss on you. “You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted you. This is the best day of my fucking life, baby.”

Then he pushes himself up on your tits and squeezes them, rubbing your nipples between his fingers through your shirt. Lines himself up with a few smooth flicks of his swollen cockhead on your sensitive nub, and pushes in with a long grunt. “Oh, fuck me. That’s a— fucking tight little pussy.” He pushes his large cock all the way inside as he bites his bottom lip and one hand comes down to dig his fingertips into your ass, pulling you as far onto him as possible. The stretch aches, burns a little as he mumbles out your name— before pulling back and shoving himself back into the hot clutch of your belly. “Gonna fuck you until you beg me. Until you can’t cum anymore.”

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solsearchingnights · 1 year

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“Martyn! TIES tried to kill me!” Scott’s voice found him and he froze.

Everyone knows he’s mine. He whirled around, fingers already crushing the shaft of his axe. “That’s it. They’re done.” He searched for Scott, rage surging when he found his man at the base of the tower with an arrow lodged in his side and blood dripping down his face. “I’ll be having them, where are they?”

Scott’s eyes flickered, with that look Martyn couldn’t decide was fear or bloodlust. “Skynet.” He walked to Martyn, taking hold of his arm. Sharp teeth and glittering scales smiled up at him. “Lets get them.”

Bloodlust then. He chuckled and brought a hand to Scott’s face, wiping blood from his cheek with a thumb. His rage didn’t fade, but redirected. It wrapped around them both, holding them together in the moment, caging them in. “No one takes you from me.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘no one takes you but me’?” He bared his neck, teasing Martyn with the invitation.

Blood pounded in his ears and he leaned forward. “Them first.” He pulled Scott’s face closer. “They don’t get away with this.” In a quick movement he was kissing Scott. His mouth tasted like blood and seawater. Martyn’s other hand let go of his axe and took hold of Scott’s hip.

Scott hummed and leaned into the kiss, nipping at his partner’s lips with razor teeth.

Martyn tangled a hand in Scott’s hair. “No one takes you but me.” He prayed into their mingling breath. His other hand drifted over smooth skin and abrasive coral. The rush of power he felt from having Scott melt into his touch was just as good as the thrill of a hunt.

Then he was pulling the arrow from Scott’s side and muffling the man’s scream with an even deeper kiss.

“Shh, there you go.” He moved to catch Scott as he collapsed. He pulled a slice of golden apple from a pouch and put it to his man’s lips. “Come on, take a bite. You’ll feel better soon.”

Scott took ragged breaths. “I should bite you for that.” But he closed his eyes and ate the apple.

“Promises, Smajor? I’ll hold you to that.” He settled them on their knees, supporting Scott as the hole in his side healed over. “Sorry about that.” He tucked Scott against his chest and whispered. “Need you in as little danger as possible.” He ran fingers through cyan hair, admiring the way it stood out against the red coral.

Scott shuddered. “It’s alright. I’ll be good to go in a second.” He leaned heavily into Martyn as his breathing steadied.

For the thousandth time, Martyn wondered if this was something he could have outside the games. Would Scott still want him when their lives weren’t dependant on it? And for the thousandth time, he decided he didn’t care. Martyn looked up to the sky, pretending the layers of death bridges weren’t in his way. He’s not yours. Ren wasn’t yours. I’m not yours. You can’t have us. The feeling of being stared at only intensified. We belong to us– to each other. He looked back down at Scott. He kissed salt-coated hair, scraping his lips on coral. “No one takes you but me.”

#majorwood #traffic spoilers #traffic shipping #im so incredibly not normal about any of this

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saltygilmores · 2 months

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Dance Marathon Episode (Aka Murder On the Dancefloor)-Part 8. (Still Not Done)

So noble of you to defend her honor moments before you eviscerate her internal organs and splatter them on the football field.

Look, we don't need you speaking on behalf of Womankind, Miss Salty. Shane has done absolutely nothing to hurt Rory. You know what will hurt, though? That axe that's about to slice through Shane's torso.

WE KNOW. We know how much his sitting down has been concerning you. Your anti-sitting-down-position has been well established. A vote for Rory GIlmore means a vote for chair-destroyal. You are the opposite of that Seinfeld episode where George Costanza felt sorry for a security guard who wasn't allowed to sit down on the job and tried to sneak him a chair.

Be more like George, Rory.

Oh Shane. You just made a very fateful decision. Never go with the killer to a second location.

Damn. It turns me on when he talks like that.

Quoth The Butthead, Anymore.

Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my actions, coming back to...Consequent me.

To her credit, she's tried to break free and impart on her mother and anyone who will listen through a series of coded blinks that she's being held hostage but you and Lorelai keep throwing her back in the ring and thwarting her escape. I love the word thwarting. Thwarting, thwarting, thwarting. Dean: You've been into him since he got into town. I've spent weeks, months actually, trying to convince myself it wasn't true (it's been a year, actually) that everything was fine between us. You're into him and he's into Shane. Who should be listening to this because it's so damn obvious.

Shane: I have no fucking idea who you or that girl in the polka dot dress are.

I love moments of self awareness on Gilmore GIrls. Embrace your idiotness, Dean.

Just thinking about how Dean is this pissed about Rory's behavior but he's still completely unaware (and will never be aware) that she also kissed Jess and cheated on him 😽 But then he cheats on his own wife and then Rory cheats on Logan with Jess and then Rory has an affair with Logan so in the end they all cancel each other out I guess. The only one of our fickle quadrant of bed hoppers who never knowingly cheated on anyone and the only boy Rory never cheated on was Jess. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

*Rubs temples* look...ugh. I don't really condone Dean yelling at Rory in public. Maybe they should have "Gotten a room", as Rory is fond of saying after learning that term for the first time 2 weeks ago. But in light of Rory's shenanigans, I kind of understand. Not only that, but taking into the account that this scene signals his merciful and long anticipated stepping down as Rory's Primary Male Life Ruiner and handing that crown to Jess, I am waving my Dean Card. I'll give him this one. Let her have it. Get it out of your system. Things with Jess are going to be so much simpler! Yes indeedy, Rory Gilmore. You are going to be riding the train to Easy Street now! Every day with Jess Mariano promises nothing but rainbows, sunshine, and puppydogs made of cupcakes. Let the shit show commence. But first, a little light homocide.

By the way, I've blanked on Lorelai's whereabouts while all of this is going down. Lorelai when she returns and finds out Dean will no be longer coming around to "Change her water bottle"

One more post coming up for the bloody finale.

#gilmore girls #denise rewatches gilmore girls #gilmore girls season 3 #they shoot gilmores dont they #tsgdt #literati #jess mariano #rory gilmore #shane campbell #shane is swan food #its imminent now #Lorelai is like one of those cartoony villains #I can imagine her going YOU FOOL YOU LET HIM ESCAPE!

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bardic-inspo · 2 months

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Midnight Chimes

Chapter Two: Moths to Flame

Pairing: Astarion x Cursed! Tav

✨Full Chapter List ✨BG3 Fic Masterlist ✨

Series Summary:

It’s easier for Astarion to believe Naomi tastes so sweet because she was his first. Easier to ignore the fact that every undead in vague proximity yearns for the same blood that’s sated him night after night. Easier to pretend her music is arcane as any other bard’s, and not divine enough to wake corpses from the dirt. Easier to pretend Naomi is simply a bard, and not something more akin to a siren. One that's slowly realized she's not just another sailor, after all. Easier to bury the fact that he's already stupidly in love with her. Like she wouldn't just raise that out of the ground, too. A curse rears its head. A devil comes calling. Astarion fights for his freedom from Cazador. He and the rest of their merry little band fight to save Tav from the doom she feels she's fated for.

Chapter Preview:

“Have I left you speechless?” Astarion laughs like the sound of tinkling chimes. “No need to be shy, darling. It’s stunning. Truly.” “I thought you quite loathed me,” she says coolly. No matter how sweet he sounds, there’s still a sharpness to his stare that warns of claws. Maybe that’s why she hasn't moved an inch since she’s seen him.

Chapter CW: Minor/Supporting character death.

A/N: Cross-posting from AO3. Dividers by @cafekitsune.

✨ Click here if you prefer to read on AO3 ✨

“If I knew you’d be playing the role of dead weight, I would’ve left you for dead on the side of that road!”

If Astarion saved even half his venom for the gnolls tearing down this road, maybe they wouldn’t be in such dire straits.

Nevermind that Naomi and Shadowheart would’ve told Astarion to beat it before he could take another slice with that knife of his. The party’s Most Valuable Cleric isn’t exactly leaping to Naomi’s defense at the moment. As it is, none of them have much of a defense left at all.

Snapping jaws clamp to Shadowheart’s shield and drag, shunting it sideways. Magic flares, bright and scalding, from the half-elf’s hands. A screech shreds the air, the acrid stench of singed fur burning in Naomi’s nose. But the gnolls’ incessant cackling doesn’t falter.

Shadowheart stumbles backward with wet, slapping steps. “A little help, here!” She grunts through gritted teeth.

Karlach heeds her plea, flames leaping to life across her flesh. She swings her axe in a wide arc, but the gnolls jerk backwards and the blade only breezes over air. Their foes slink into a circle around her and Shadowheart, spitting.

Sweat beads across Naomi’s brow. She clutches the silver symbol chained around her neck -- an elven dancer, poised with a sword. Come on. Come on!

Silver flame snaps at the heels of a slavering gnoll. But it snuffs soon after it sparks. Harmless as a sneeze. Slitted eyes lock to hers. Maddening laughter mingles with a low, guttural growl.

“That’s it?!” Astarion’s exasperation hits a new octave. “That’s your contribution?!”

Naomi’s chest heaves. She drops back into cover behind the overturned cart, shoulder brushing Astarion’s bristling one. An arrow hisses past her ear. The ground sizzles where it splatters on impact, bare inches from her feet. Something snaps free beneath her ribs, like a breaking bowstring.

Nevermind all of this cleric shit, actually.

“Fuck it!” She snarls.

“Oh now, you’re throwing in the towel?” Astarion seethes. He nocks another arrow and shifts to shoot. “I was sure you’d set fire to it al--”

For a sparse, sacred second, Astarion’s livid glare gives way to eyes blown wide as moons. They track the quivering mote of magic hanging a breath from his nose as it steers an arrow safely past instead of through him. Even after the flute leaves Naomi’s lips, the hum sticks on her skin like static. His jaw drops slack, anger melted to awe. What started as a shout ends in a whisper only she can hear.

“--ready.”

Noise rushes in again. Karlach rushes the opening and arcs down with her axe. The gnoll cleaves. The weapon wrenches back with a sickening crunch. Blood splatters the dirt in webby strings.

Naomi pivots, forgoing cover and for the flute pressed close. Magic shivers across her lips, like the gentle caress of a lover. She shudders. The tremor builds, barreling down her neck, raising hairs in its wake, running through her ribs, to her feet, until the ground itself is shaking. A storm of claws rains from overhead as the gnolls lunge towards her. Thunder pulses from where she stands, sudden as a snap of fingers.

The gnolls fall, backs slapping sand. Heat lashes near Naomi’s cheek. Karlach swings again and makes a mess of them. The road’s a river of red, vined in viscera.

It’s over. But it isn’t quiet. A chorus of breath that can’t be caught aches in Naomi’s ears. Her heartbeat’s a rampant drum, pounding next to a melody that plays faintly in her mind. She can’t quite grasp the tune. But it lingers all the same, like a bruise she doesn’t remember earning.

She’s earned someone’s ire, apparently. Astarion’s glare comes to life once more with murderous vengeance. “You’re a fucking bard?! This whole time, you-- I fucking knew it!”

By the time they trudge back to camp -- beaten, bloody, but still breathing in spite of it all-- Astarion’s changed his tune.

“Well, well,” he tuts with a devilish gleam in his eye, “someone’s been holding out on us.”

Naomi trains her attention to the task at hand -- dinner. The meat starts to sizzle on its skewer. Not so different from those scarlet eyes searing into the back of her head. But other stares join Astarion’s, morphing into shadows cast long from the firelight. She doesn’t need to turn her cheek to know they’re waiting. All of them, at this point.

One of them isn’t so content to continue doing so.

“So, it seems that while you’re an absolutely abysmal cleric, you’re not a bad bard. I’d say I underestimated you,” Astarion muses dryly, “but given the evidence, I don’t know what other conclusion I could’ve drawn. Whatever else you are, you’re quite a good liar. Aren’t you?”

She spares him a sideways glance to find his arms crossed. Astarion doesn’t wait, he demands. An answer, attention, satisfaction. The rest of their crew beg the same, but they have the decency to do so in blessed silence.

It’s a virtue that eludes her, even as she tries to seek its sanctuary. Naomi rubs her throbbing temples. Still, the ringing in her ears doesn’t stifle. It prickles in the depths of her memory, in a melody both foreign and familiar. Gods, how does it go again?

Astarion clears his throat, expectant.

Naomi sighs tightly. “And I suppose that wounds you, you open, bleeding book.”

His cover hasn’t opened an inch in the weeks since their second meeting. Third, technically, if you count his apparent sighting of her on the nautiloid. But she’s seen enough to be sure it is a cover.

After all, she first saw ‘mister boring magistrate’ fishing in the Flophouse. As far as she could tell from her brief residency there, Fraygo’s housed foreigners, passersby, and people who wanted to rob them. If Astarion’s from the Gate as he says, it leaves little wonder as to what category he’d fall in.

“Ha!” His laughter comes pitchy. “On the contrary, I’m thoroughly entertained. I suppose that’s what a bard’s good for.”

Naomi’s jaw shifts, but before she can parry his backhanded commentary, a gentler voice enters the fray.

“We’ve all got our stories, our secrets, and our reasons for them,” Wyll interjects. “You don’t owe us every one of yours. But we do deserve to know where your loyalties lie.”

Naomi winces. The fire’s spitting, but it somehow stings far less than the warlock with the heart of gold wondering where her heart is at.

Astarion scoffs, hands shifting to his hips. “More importantly, I need to know you’re not holding back when you’re supposed to be watching my back!”

“Why were you?” Shadowheart’s voice cuts in, cool as steel. “Holding back?”

Naomi’s eyes flit to Shadowheart’s scar, so similar to the one Naomi has across her own nose. Her fingers twitch. She buries the urge to reach up to her own face to trace the shape of the scrape. Why were you holding back?

It didn’t end well the last time she played, she could say. Or at least, the last time she sang. She could say, ‘superstition’. But either way, she’d have to say so much more.

“It’s been a while since I played,” she settles on instead. “I grew up in an Eilistraeean temple, in an opening to the Underdark. Before all of this, I hadn’t ventured very far out onto the surface. I was only just starting to. This little adventure has been…strange in so many senses.”

Wyll’s expression softens. “You thought your goddess would protect you.”

Sure. Close enough. Naomi takes the cue, smiles sadly, and nods. Astarion spoils the moment with some strangled sound between a laugh and a snort. Like a dying horse.

A hand cuffs her shoulder. Naomi stiffens for a second before easing again. Gale kneels down beside her, plucking the skewer from between her fingers. An act of mercy, it turns out. She blinks, now noticing the blackened meat that’s been right in front of her and in the flames for far too long.

Oh. Naomi’s lips twitch ruefully. Crispy.

“A bard’s magic is arcane,” Gale says, taking a knife to carve off the worst of the char. “But we’ve all seen you wield divine power. Your goddess must still favor you.”

“Hardly,” Astarion mutters, faint with dwindling interest. He’s drifted halfway back to his tent, though his ears stay perked.

Gale arches a brow. “A great deal, I’d wager. Most deities are not so content to play ‘second fiddle’, so to speak. If a god gifts you powers, they usually expect you’ll use them effectively.”

“I swear I really am better with a fiddle,” Naomi says, sheepish.

“You’d be better at banging pots and pans than with sacred flame,” Shadowheart laughs without malice. “You’re not bad at healing, though.”

“Ouch,” Naomi pans. “I think I might need some.”

The wizard needs a more intellectual peace of mind, it seems. Their banter only deepens Gale’s worry lines.

“Eilistraee is the Dark Dancer,” Naomi tells him. “She’s a goddess of freedom, and music, and, well, dancing. She’d never punish me for this.”

She wouldn’t. Naomi swallows hard. Would she?

“If anything,” she says, shrugging her shoulders back, “she’s probably as relieved as the lot of you look.”

Gale nods, saying nothing, but thinking loud enough for Naomi to hear him without the help of the tadpole. He’s caught on something, like a gear that won’t budge. She teeths her cheek, pondering what has him hung up, when fresh heat prickles her skin.

Her eyes dart to the campfire, but Gale has it neatly tamed. It’s Karlach that’s crackling. The tiefling saunters up behind them.

“So, new you,” Karlach says, eyes alight with mischief, “what other tricks have you got up your sleeve?”

Before she can entertain an answer, Gale gives her one.

“I’m formally usurping you from dinner duties,” he says warmly. “My first command with my newfound authority is for you to regale us with song while I rescue our sustenance.”

Naomi offers an easy smile. “Your wish is my command, oh benevolent one.”

Naomi frees the flute from the fastenings at her belt, lifts the hollowed bone to her lips, and lets her breath flow. Music flows with it, playful and springy. It floods their little clearing in the woods, hushing the sounds of scurrying creatures.

Is this how it goes? No.

It’s not the melody haunting her head, but for a few moments’ time, she doesn’t feel so trapped in there. Vaguely, she feels her comrades watching her again as she plays, but as the music carries through the camp, it carries her mind away from them. Carries her away from tadpoles and gnolls and concerns of certain doom. They’re all fading sparks, drifting into nightfall. To dust, they all return.

Until her wandering, distant gaze meets a vermillion one, and it pins her back to the present. Astarion peers at her over a page he's no longer pretending to read. He’s got that look again, the one he wore when she cast cutting words and cast away the arrow intent on his demise. Such round eyes, softened in surprise. But they narrow, knife-like, a second later, as soon as he sees he’s been seen.

A sly smile curls over Astarion’s lips as her song bends with the smoke from the cookfire. It’s a small victory, maybe, but she’s not sure if it's his or hers.

The song dwindles. Naomi spies another set of glittering eyes that send her stomach plummeting. Lae’zel doesn’t just stare. She’s stabbing Naomi, surely, in some spiritual sense if not a literal one. Must not be keen on bards.

Naomi sets the flute away again. Karlach clears her throat pointedly.

“Erm, don’t take this the wrong way -- not that that wasn’t very lovely! It was! I was just wondering, do you have anymore, you know, fighting tricks?”

Naomi shrugs. “I can cast ‘stab’ as a cantrip.”

“You--”

The bugbear snarls through his teeth.

“--ruined--”

He grips the morningstar like a vice, taking swing to Astarion’s head. Still, snickers spill in a fountain from the elf’s lips. He can’t stem his tide of laughter. Not since they burst into the barn and found the bugbear and the ogre fucking over a haystack.

The flute fucks the bugbear, instead. The morningstar glances, harmless, over and above Astarion’s carefully coiffed curls.

“--my--”

Splinters burst from the board the bugbear breaks instead of the Gale he intended to. The flute screws him again.

“--rutting!”

And again. He’s left panting, winded, and dearly wanting.

“Oh that’s what that was supposed to be?” Naomi huffs. “Sounded like you stubbed a toe.” Her eyes drop to his bare member, still bared for all to see. “It looks like a stubby toe.”

That hit landed. She can see it in the crazed gleam that bulges in his eyes. The morningstar thumps, forgotten, at his furred feet. The bugbear lunges. The flute flies from her fingertips and crunches to ruin between his jaws. He spits out the pieces like loose teeth.

Naomi lets out a deflated groan. “See, this is why I didn’t pack the fucking fiddle.”

“Not so tricksy now!” He laughs darkly, lips parted in a too-wide grin.

Her back smacks boards. Hot, rancid breath clouds her cheek as the bugbear looms, boxing her in. Only for a moment. Naomi spies a tell-tale shimmer behind the bugbear’s back.

“Oh no,” she says with a smirk. “Now I’m much worse.”

Astarion’s knife sinks in. Blood sprays in a warm, wet rain across her neck. The bugbear’s face twists with the blade.

Her lips pucker, and a high, wavering whistle whisks her away. Mist shrouds her shoes as she fades. Naomi emerges again above the fray, poised on the junction of beams crossing beneath the pitched roof. A low woosh chases after her. Astarion unfurls from the fog on the beam’s other end, the soles of his boots glowing briefly blue.

He sets his sights on their larger quarry. Karlach’s kept the ogre at bay, but the beast bears down, relentless with fists and fury. Gale gives them a wide berth, working glittering fractals out of the air with a flourish and a biting incantation. Frost fans from his outstretched palms. His spell paints an ice slick beneath the ogre’s fumbling feet. Down she goes. Naomi braces against the aftershock. Debris patters her shoulders as the whole barn rattles.

Karlach tumbles down, too. The tiefling buckles, hissing as she grips the gash in her arm. Naomi’s whistle keens sweeter. When Karlach draws her hand away again, the wound’s drawn closed.

An arrow flits past her cheek. Naomi turns to see Astarion easing from his stance as the ogre breathes her last. Her one-time lover’s still stubbornly holding onto his, though.

A gargled cry echoes from down below. Naomi watches the wounded bugbear crawling among the scattered straw. Pitiful.

“Hey!” She calls. “Up here!”

His neck cranes, wild eyes burning at the sight of her overhead. Naomi’s tongue lies heavy in her mouth. The words are stones. She casts them with a pair of fingers. Middle ones, raised in turn.

“Up. Yours.”

Green light floods his skull, seeping from his eyes sockets, gushing from his lips. He shudders. And then he wilts, limp and lifeless.

He’s hardly mourned. Astarion’s breathy laughter spurts out of him, unbidden.

“That actually killed him?” He beams, but his eyes are dark and his voice scrapes low. “Oh, you’re an absolute menace.”

The praise rings in her ear. Like temple chimes. Or warning bells. Or, something else. A song, maybe. She can’t pin it down.

Sea spray slaps the cliffside near the coast, but it doesn’t drown the peeling cry of a lute plucked to misery. A shrill chorus comes with it. Naomi grimaces.

“Is that meant to be music?” Lae’zel’s face wrinkles in disgust.

“I didn’t think you knew the meaning,” Naomi mutters, picking her way up the slope.

“Likewise,” Lae’zel grumbles.

“It’s quite agonizing, isn’t it?” Astarion groans.

The culprit comes into view as they crest the hill. She’s a tiefling woman with violet skin and flowing hair decked in motley. A pretty picture of what a bard should be, if she wasn’t wilted over her own instrument.

“It’s-- it’s just stuck,” Naomi sighs, shaking her head.

The tiefling shoots a wary glance her way. “You’re right. But how did you know?”

“Besides the fact that poor lute is crying out for mercy?”

“Ugh. I know I’m butchering it with this stupid song,” the tiefling mutters, burying her head in her hands.

“It’s not stupid. It’s just…stuck,” Naomi says again. Like the sudden lump in Naomi’s throat that thickens, and doesn’t budge. She coughs to clear it, but the pressure remains. “Let’s start with the lyrics.”

But it doesn’t stop there. By sundown, Alfira’s pitched a tent in their camp and taken refuge by the fire. Her music’s mournful, but hopeful. Happy in the sad way of something good that’s happened before. But now, it’s done with.

Gale balks as Naomi reaches to stir the stew. She’s shooed off unceremoniously. Forever banned from dinner duty, it seems.

She paces, purposeless. Fluteless. Fidgeting. Cursed with idle hands. At least a devil’s workshop might put them to use. Sounds productive. This dwelling certainly isn’t.

What use is it, thinking about the Doom again? The tadpole is already in her brain. Doesn’t mean it has to be so incessantly on it.

And of course, their only hope, Halsin the druid, had to find himself in the middle of a goblin fortress. Something, someday should be easy. If it isn’t any of this. Tomorrow, they’ll attempt extraction. Which means tonight, there’s no use being sick about it.

But her ears are still ringing. Someone hands her stew. She sips it halfheartedly, and sets the rest away to cool indefinitely.

“Won’t you share a song of yours?” Alfira says some time later, with a pitying sort of smile.

Naomi sits on the stumps with her, heaving a weighty sigh. “Who’s to say I have any? You said yourself, you haven’t heard of me.”

“You helped me find the words for my music well enough. You’ve got something stuck, too. Don’t you?”

Naomi frowns. Yes, something stuck something awful. A little worm, wreaking havoc in her head. Among other things. Or, maybe the obvious thing is the only thing. Side effects of side-stepping ceremorphosis for too long.

Alfira shifts her lute in her lap. “How about I play, and you sing it if you know it?”

The first chord thrums. Naomi feels it stir beneath her sternum. Feels the shrill ache leave her ears at last. This isn’t what’s stuck. But, maybe it’s part of it. Her eyes slide shut, as if to sleep.

Naomi knows it. She knows the first note catches in her throat before it comes free, but she frees it anyway. She feels the butterfly fear flutter in her gut, and sings, still.

“Bare feet along the coast

Sand swallows the steps we’ve tread before

But you’ve made your mark

Like the silver tide that sunders the shore

Breaking waves and carving cliffs

Yielding to the sweeping sea

In the salt and in the stone

You’ve made your mark on me…”

It’s been a long time, she thinks, as the final verse closes, and silence comes again. It’s been a long time since she sang.

It’s about time. It was all a long time ago. It hasn’t happened since. It doesn’t have to happen again.

And it felt good. She lets out a long breath that drifts like a ghost. Gods, it felt good. She peels her nose to the simmering stars, shoulder blades sinking back and down.

Naomi blinks. She didn’t realize how much time slipped from her, sitting here, as the embers withered down to smoke plumes. She’s the only one that remains to keep the crickets company. Soft snores and sounds of slumber flit across the camp. Naomi stands, stiffness prickling in her legs.

“Quite the view. Isn’t it?”

Not alone, after all. She pivots, pulse kicking only to tumble right back down again.

“Astarion! You’re--”

Lounging. Just a few feet away. He lies with his arms propping his back, head tilted towards the sky, just as hers was. Basking. Moonlight melts in his curls and leaves a sheen on his cheeks. He looks made of marble; sharp edges lining supple muscle and smooth skin.

“I didn’t know you were there,” she finishes lamely.

“My apologies for startling you,” he says, not seeming sorry at all. “You seemed lost in thought. I found myself in much the same state. Reflecting on what tomorrow might bring when we find this druid.” His expression shifts, smirk fading with his brow bending in. “Will he know how to bring the tadpole under control? Will this little adventure of ours be over?”

“Honestly? I…” Naomi trails off, toying with the notion. Honesty hasn’t been her strong suit. So far. She takes a stab at it, anyway. “I doubt there’s a simple solution to something that’s so fucked to begin with.”

Astarion cocks his head. “You’re not one for faith, are you? I suppose that makes us kindred spirits. Perhaps that’s the real reason why you couldn’t keep with the cleric routine.”

The barb doesn’t feel like one, said so gently.

“You have a lovely voice, you know,” he says, soft as silk. “I hope this isn’t the only chance I’ll get to hear it.”

It might be. Naomi swallows, but her throat’s grown dry as a desert.

“Have I left you speechless?” He laughs like the sound of tinkling chimes. “No need to be shy, darling. It’s stunning. Truly.”

“I thought you quite loathed me,” she says coolly.

No matter how sweet he sounds, there’s still a sharpness to his stare that warns of claws. Maybe that’s why she hasn't moved an inch since she’s seen him.

“Not quite,” he says with a shake of his head. “I quite like what little of ‘you’ I’ve gotten to see. Better than whatever you were pretending to be. I’d like to see more of the real you, however tomorrow unfolds.”

So that’s what he means. He doesn’t want this to be an end. Naomi tilts her head. Why?

He stands in a lithe motion, fluid as a brushstroke. “And you’d like to see more of what the surface has to offer, I’m sure. I promise it’s not all illithids and imminent doom. There’s beauty here, if you know where to find it.” He drifts a step closer. And then another. “Art. Poetry. Music.”

Every word is crooned in a low timbre with a rasp at the edge. They sound like songs, the way he says them. Brimming with depths unknown and promises just below the surface. Same as his eyes, alight with an agenda she can’t quite clock.

Same as that night at the Flophouse, where she couldn’t shake his stare. What would’ve happened if something else hadn’t almost happened? What would he have done, if she came as close as they are now?

She should know better, now. He’s nearer than he’s ever been, aside from the times they’ve brushed by each other during their brushes with danger. And he’s pretty to listen to. A red flag all on its own. She should know that, at least.

“Alfira had it right, didn’t she?” Astarion says with a lift at the corner of his mouth. “You were stuck. And now you’re…” He closes his fingers to his palms and opens them again, casting them down to his sides. “...free as a bird.”

“And it suits you,” he says, wetting his lips. His gaze dips down and lingers for a moment before it fixes hers again. “This little transformation of yours.”

Noise rips to life in her ears. Naomi’s palms fly to her temples and press. But it doesn’t drown out. Bile burns the back of her throat. She spies a blur, shifting past Astarion’s shoulder.

“What is that?” She pants. “Alfira?”

Her pulse sprints. Panic pours adrenaline in her veins. Alfira’s tent is torn. Ribbons of it billow in the breeze. The stench of rot rolls with it. Naomi recoils. Not again. No.

There’s a shape, in the dark. Wet, like a puddle. Crumpled. Breaking, under gnashing teeth.

And another figure, hunched over the first. Pale. Spindly. Bony.

Astarion doesn’t budge. His brow wrinkles, annoyance cracking his facade. “I don’t hear--”

But the dead do. The creature’s head rolls upright with a sickening snap. The brush comes alive in sudden cacophonous clatter.

Astarion moves when she makes him. Naomi shoves his shoulders with as much force as she can muster. “Astarion -- look out!”

“Well,” Astarion says, with a hint of a smile and reproach in equal measure. “Looks like someone’s finally decided to rejoin the living.”

Naomi finds him with one knee propped, an arm draped over it, and his other leg dangling over the low stonework on the side of the bridge. A creek babbles beneath their feet. His knife glints by the barest light of the slivered moon, flipping once more before he stows it.

“I slept?” She asks, though she knows the answer.

“Like the dead,” he replies, with a smile that’s grown. It doesn’t match the flicker of worry that darts through his eyes, rabbit-quick, and then gone. Quick as Naomi’s heartbeat, still hammering. “Did you dream?”

“Mhm,” Naomi hums, forlorn. “Spiders again.” She saunters over to sit upon the stone beside him, swinging both legs over the side of the wall and letting them hang.

“Hm. Considering our daily dose of the macabre, perhaps that means it was a pleasant one, compared to what it could’ve been.”

The fire snaps behind them, festering in its final death throes. When she glances back at it, over her shoulder, there’s no flames to be seen. Only a flurry of sparks, bursting to fleeting life on a wayward breeze. The campsite’s quiet as the grave without another soul stirring.

In darkest night, she and Astarion can see better than most others in their camp. It used to irk him, getting voluntold for this shift of watch. He prefers to see the sunrise. But then, he decided, all on his own, he’d rather see the stars with her. So, he’d abandoned Gale’s educational company for finer sorts. His words, not hers.

There isn’t much to see, though. Even the moon’s turned her cheek, showing only a glimpse of it. Naomi scans the cliffs, surveying either end of their chokepoint on the road cutting through them. Not many places to run, should they find themselves surrounded. But there’s not many threats they wouldn’t see coming from up here.

Baldur’s Gate is still three sleeps away. Though, Naomi will take the trance for them, instead. If she has any say in it. She hadn’t meant to sleep at all, let alone into the start of her watch.

“I promise no more corpses came calling,” Astarions says with a searching gaze. “No more curses, and no more hungry shadows.”

Naomi’s attention follows the slope of own arm, to her palm, splayed, on the stone. No more spell stains on her skin, either. For now. Still, her gaze lingers, until a paler hand comes to lie over hers.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” He murmurs.

Naomi swallows, but finds herself suddenly parched. For water. For words.

“Oh, don’t hurt yourself, dear,” he sighs, but it’s soft. “I think I can hear it well enough without the worm. You don’t think expunging a centuries-old darkness did the trick.”

Naomi dares a glance upwards. He speaks reassurance in the language of skepticism. But she catches a glimpse of anxiety again, passing like a phantom on his face before fading.

“You don’t think saving a cleric of Selune, rescuing the actual divine daughter of Selune, or wrenching Shadowheart from Shar’s grip exorcized any of your own demons.” He clicks his tongue. “Even though you killed a lot of already dead people.”

Astarion leans in, stoking familiar, feather-light anticipation in her gut. He stops as they come nearly nose-to-nose. Farther than her lips would like, but near enough to read her mind. “You need to be sure.”

“If I can be,” she says, weaker than she means to.

Gooseflesh wakes on her skin, brought to life by Astarion raising only a finger. His nail drags, just sharp enough to be sweet, up the column of her throat, sending a shiver down Naomi’s spine. His index presses beneath her chin, and lifts.

“Then sing for me.”

He didn’t ask for a frail whisper, but it’s all she has left to offer. “What do you want to hear?”

Just one finger, one little motion. And she’d offer him anything. He knows it. He has to know it.

“One of your songs,” he says at once. “The one you sang at Last Light.”

He knows exactly what he wants. Naomi’s chin still rests on his fingertip, but barely so, on a barely-there touch. Only her feet hang loose, but the whole of her feels weightless.

“I sang a lot of songs at Last Light,” she says, clearing the husk in her throat.

A pout wrinkles his perfection. “You know the one.”

A wry smile steals across her face. He knows it, too. Even though she hasn’t sung it since. His finger leaves her chin with a flick as the first note leaves her lips.

“When she laid her gaze on me

What I knew of warmth melted

Into honey-covered and sticky-sweet

Incessant, yearning, burning heat…”

And when she laid her gaze on me

I felt myself undone

For whatever I had been before

Was gone to dust forevermore…”

She sings it in elvish, the way she wrote it. She sings about a girl’s first time in the sun. About a silly little drow who confused freckles for death pox. It starts sweet. Hopeful. And then it aches with a swell.

Astarion draws his dagger, and draws watchful eyes over their surroundings.

“But when I stumbled back to shadowed halls

And gazed upon a looking glass

I found not love, but scalding sin

Written on my very skin…”

Whatever I had been before

Whatever I might have lived to be

Was gone to dust forevermore

The sunlight scorched the life from me...”

I drew my fists and damned her name

But still I bore my grief and shame

That I had traded night for light

That I must forsake her to save my life…”

The song ends where it started: hopeful. Like the way Astarion glances at her now. Wide-eyed, like he’s been wind-blown by wonder, wearing her favorite smile. The points of his fangs poke out from his lips by the barest bit.

He stows his dagger in its sheath again. But the pinprick of nerves stays sharp, needling beneath Naomi’s ribs.

“When dawn broke the dark didn’t waver

Nor did my heartbeat slow

I watched the sun rise from safety in shadows

And dared, again, to dance in the glow…”

And still, I lived, and still, I breathed

And still I bore the scars

But no others knew them by that pain

They said my freckles looked like stars…”

She laid her gaze on me again

And I was never the same

I laid to rest what I had been before

And when I end, I’ll be dust, evermore

But the great between is my domain.”

“Hm,” Astarion hums, fingers still rapping the rhythm on the stone. “Perhaps you were right, my dear. I daresay there’s an undead presence nearby that’s simply insurmountable. I don’t think we should trifle with that level of dark power. Best to cater to his whims.” His eyes flash, brimming with mischief, and the lightest nip of hunger. “Keep him sated, so to speak.”

“Don’t I already?” Naomi shoots him a sideways glance, but her wary eyes are quick to return to the darkened edge of her sightline.

“Mm. You are…”

Stuck in his throat, it seems. Seems a fair revenge, for how he’s made everything beneath her ribs feel like mush with just a look. Made her sing with one wag of a finger. Made her dare to sing again, at all.

“...too adorable,” he huffs with an accompanying eyeroll. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, darling. Look around,” he says with a wave of his arms. “It’s only me.”

It is. Just the two of them. But it hurts to look at him, just now. Like staring straight at the sun. She can feel the warmth he doesn’t speak, hear the part he doesn’t say. And you know I’d never hurt you. I love you.

Or, she wants to. Hear it. Maybe more than he wants to say it.

Naomi wavers where she sits. “It took a few hours, with A-Alfira--”

“We’re on watch. We’ve got the time, an arsenal of weapons, and alarm spells. And a cleric. A real one, with Selune on our side instead of Shar. Oh, and dare I forget,” he leans a whisper to her ear, the sound as sheer as a negligee, “a very limber bard. You must’ve heard of her.”

Briefly, his hand cups her cheek, kissing sweet, tingling coolness over the warmth flushed there. Naomi arches a brow, but it’s too late. It’s already over, and he already knows he’s found a new trick. And, it’s at least sort of working to quell the disquiet gnawing at her insides.

“I know you don’t believe it yet,” he says, his smile giving way to seriousness. “But I do. You’ve survived so much else. Why not this, too?”

Naomi gives the slightest shake of her head. “Because there is never a simple solution to something that is so fucked to begin with.”

“Well,” he says, chipper regardless, “then it’s a good thing there was absolutely nothing simple about lifting the shadow curse and shooing off all of those other pesky undead. There’s only room for one in the tent.”

He’s right. No more undead show up before the sun does. But still, some haunted song begs remembrance in the back of Naomi’s brain.

A/N: The fic settles into a more linear progression (less time hoppy) going forward from this chapter. Hope you enjoyed, would love to hear if you did! <3 <3

#astarion #astarion ancunin #astarion fanfic #astarion romance #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #bg3 fanfic #midnight chimes #naomi tavriel #my writing

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cosmara1 · 8 months

Text

Inner Beast - Scott (LimL)

Category: Hurt/Comfort

Main Character(s): Scott, Martyn

TW: Blood, Minor Gore, Sensory Overload

Scott stared out over the ocean, the salty sea breeze flowing through his hair. He was enjoying the beginning of this new series, now that the boogeyman chaos had settled down and he had set up an island over the coral reef. There was only one thing bothering him.

He had no tail.

In every other life series, he had sprouted a long tail with a furry tip that matched his current colour, and he had similar tails in a few other worlds as well.

Oddly, he didn't have that here. Instead, Scott had realized that he was sprouting gills, currently non-functioning, on his neck. He also had sleek faintly grey skin on the top of his nose, head, arms, and legs. This seemed to serve no function though, and he thought little of it.

-Time Skip-

It was now three hours into the series, according to his clock that he had received from Grian, but that was clearly wrong. Nine days had passed, not a few hours.

That was not the worst of Scott's worries at the moment though, as he had found that he had gotten webbed hands and feet. His grey skin had become very prominent as well, as Martyn had pointed out when he had visited. He even had sprouted flowing teal fins, two from the sides of his arms and one on his back.

What is happening to me? He stressed, raising an arm to scratch at his head. What am I? Some sort of weird sea beast?

Scott's eyes skimmed over the water, wondering if there was anything in there that could give him a clue about his predicament. Pufferfish? No... Lionfish? No. Maybe a Blue Tang? No. Dolphin? N- Wait a moment...

He paused, watching the grey creatures swim around in the reef. That could be it. But dolphins don't have gills, do they?

He frowned, then got to his feet and leaped into the water. He sank down slightly, before beginning to try and swim towards the pod of dolphins, but when he tried to kick with his newly webbed feet, he instead jerked forwards at an odd angle, quickly spiraling out of control as he attempted to kick again and again. ACK- What's happening?! What's going on now?!

The hybrid's eyes glanced down for a moment to see what was wrong with his legs just to find that...

He had no legs.

In place of his legs, he had a huge tail akin to that of a dolphin, but instead of the usual grey fin at the end of it, there was the same loose, flowing, material that made up his fins.

Scott carefully moved in back and forth, in a slower and almost snakelike way, moving with the flow of the water around him. As he did so, he began moving forwards in a much more controlled fashion. I could get used to this...

-Time Skip-

It had been several weeks in this place, and the clock was still only moving by 20 minutes each day. Scott had slowly become more and more fish-like as the time ticked on, slowly growing a tail for his non-aquatic form as well as his gills beginning to partially work. With the help of Martyn he even confirmed that he was part dolphin as well as part betta fish.

He had not died as of yet, but he quickly realized that every time that he got a major wound, coral would begin to grow on him. So far he only had a little bit on his arms and legs, but he was sure more would appear.

"Cleo, your children want you home now." Scott called down the ladder where his undead ally was climbing up. She nodded, climbing up onto the roof of the tower with him.

"Are you ready? Are you really sure you want me to kill you?" She asked, drawing her axe as she said it.

Scott nodded. "Yeah, if you don't, the others will."

"Now? Before boogeyman?"

"Yeah, I would do it now, because otherwise we could get into an awkward situation..." He trailed off, staring at her axe nervously.

Cleo grinned. "Okay." He axe sliced down, colliding with his chest painfully, but he ignored it.

"Bye!"

Scott respawned at the Coral Isles where Martyn was just kinda chilling on the beach and he immediately jumped back in surprise when he saw Scott.

"I- Scott! The coral- It's- Look!" Martyn stammered, fumbling for his communicator and opening up the mirror function, showing Scott his reflection. The coral on his limbs had spread slightly, and a new patch of coral was now growing on his tail. He also now had little deer-like antlers of light orange coral.

A small voice of primal instinct inside him cried out that this was an intruder in his territory, but the urge to attack was easy to quash for now. He gave a little laugh, shrugging off the alarm from his ally.

"Martyn, chill, it does that." Scott told him "Save your terror for when the boogeyman is gonna be chosen, it'll be in like five minutes."

Martyn sighed, but nodded. "Okay, okay, fine. There's something I need to show you though, and I think it has something to do with you."

Scott cocked his head "Uh, sure? What is it?"

The blonde turned around to reveal a spiked fish tail growing from his lower back, as well as brown spines protruding from his elbows. He then turned back to face Scott and pushed his hair to the side, showing that he had similar looking spikes as horns.

"... Oh. I don't know why that happened." Scott shrugged. This has never happened before... And I've also never based with Martyn, and I'm sure that he's not quite human.

He quickly diverted Martyn's attention to the communicators, which were showing their boogeyman messages now. I've got to look into that.

-Time Skip-

"Ow ow ow, dang, that's a lot of poison-" Scott hissed "Shouldn't have put down that pufferfish." He was being chased by the yellows, as he was one of the last greens on the server after a little while of people killing each other.

That little voice screaming for murder was now a lot louder with so many people aggravating him, and his head pounded as he resisted the urge. Oh no, oh no. I can't do this for much longer. He could see Jimmy and Joel right outside of the water, and the Clockers had just dived in after him, weapons at the ready.

"Martyn. Martyn where are you?!" He yelled, but he couldn't see his ally among the mass of people that had surrounded him.

He was cornered.

That was the breaking point for him, and he let himself go feral, feeling a huge rush of anger and adrenaline. His fins flared aggressively and he bared his teeth in a threat of violence.

Scott hissed and snarled at the people circling him, coiled like an angry viper, but they didn't move in range of a strike for a little while. Until, finally, one did.

Jimmy, yellow wings flailing in the ocean currents, swam for him with a crossbow in hand. Bad move. Scott sprung towards him, sharp teeth sinking into his shoulder. His tail coiled around the canary's legs, and his clawed hands tore at his chest.

The man would have died right them and there, ripped to shreds, if it wasn't for Grian and Joel grabbing Jim and pulling him away. The water around him was slowly turning red, and the Bad Boys scrambled for healing potions to help their dying ally.

Everyone stared in shock at the cuts and slashes all over Jimmy's body, and then turned their wide-eyed gazes to the angry hybrid.

"... Scott?" Someone broke the silence that had fallen over the server. It was Pearl, who was half hidden behind BigB. She poked her head out of the water for air before swimming a little closer.

"Are you okay? Can you hear me?" She called. There was no weapon in her hands, and a small voice of sanity inside of him cried for him to stop, to not hurt her, to calm down, but nothing it did could stop him from what he was about to do.

Pearl inched closer and closer. "Listen to me, I don't know what's really happening with you, but-" She was cut off by Scott suddenly striking, claws aimed at her face.

Chaos exploded in the ocean, some people fleeing, some trying to help Pearl, and some just screaming. Loudest of all being Pearl herself, until she was saved by a very generous Tango. Scott lashed out at the people attacking him, but there were too many for him to fight at once, even in this manic frenzy.

Scott swam away, darting through the water to escape his attackers. He found a tiny underwater cave and quickly entered it, then poked his head up into a pocket of air inside. The only light in there came from the dim screen of the communicator, which showed a few new messages.

Okay, calm down Scott, nobody's here. The hybrid told himself, his heartbeat slowly getting back to a normal pace, and he began to read the messages.

SmallishBeans: THE BLOODY HELL WAS THAT?!

ImpulseSV: idk ask martyn

InTheLittleWood: I don't know either

ZombieCleo: i think we need a moment to deal with this

BdoubleO100: time pause?

Grian: i'm not supposed to mess with the games, but i'll pause the timers for this. something's really wrong here.

No shit, Sherlock. He grumbled to himself, but he was still thankful that his time had stopped for now. Every nerve in his body still screamed for a fight, and he knew he would be triggered by literally anything. Scott tried to start calming himself down, but then he felt a hand grab his shoulder.

Scott hissed, whipping around. ENEMY! It was still pitch black in the cave for another moment, until a torch was placed on the wall, illuminating the face of his attacker.

He nearly went in for the kill, but he had just enough self-control to hold himself back. It was Martyn, and the man clearly meant no harm to him. The two stared at each other for several seconds.

"Hey there... You good?" Martyn asked cautiously. Scott stared back at him, fully aware of how unhinged he currently looked, with traces of blood still on his teeth and claws, as well as how his hands twitched towards Martyn involuntarily.

"Er- Okay, if you don't mind, could you..." The other hybrid carefully swam outside, beckoning for him to follow. Safe? Maybe?

Scott floated out after his friend, but then spotted something a few meters below him. NOT SAFE-

He was too late to escape. A net closed around him, lifting the feral hybrid out of the water, where his large tail became legs once more. Scott screeched, clawing at the ropes, but they were too thick for him to break.

He could tell that the others around him on the shore were yelling something, he could see their mouths moving, but he couldn't hear them. All he heard was a painful ringing in his ears, and his head throbbed horribly. The sunlight practically stabbing his eyes didn't help either.

The hybrid clawed at his head as the horrible agony didn't stop, it only got worse. Scott could feel his own irregular breathing, and hear his own heart pounding, but he could do nothing about it. After several minutes of enduring this torment of his mind's own creation, it all suddenly went silent.

No ringing

No yelling

No screams of terror

Nothing.

"-ott? Scott? Scott, can you hear me?" It was Martyn.

Scott cracked open his eyes, his slitted pupils locked onto the man's face. He nearly leaped again to attack, but it was much easier to refrain from doing so now. Scott could see the faint figures of everyone around him, watching him in silence.

The net that he had been trapped in was gone, and he was in a small fenced-in area with nobody but him and Martyn in it. The two stared at each other as Scott's breathing slowed to a normal pace, and his headache began to subside.

"Are you okay?" His friend whispered, putting one hand on his shoulder.

Scott hesitated, then replied in a horrible croaking voice. "Y-Yeah. I'm okay... I think." Martyn smiled softly, then wrapped his arms around Scott in a hug.

"Thank god you're alright. What happened there anyways? Do you remember anything?" The other hybrid asked him worriedly.

"I... Don't really want to talk about it here, if you don't mind." Scott mumbled nervously, and Martyn quickly nodded, a sympathetic smile crossing his face.

"I understand"

#dangthatsalongname #scott smajor #smajor #smajor1995 #inthelittlewood #martyn littlewood #writing #limited life #limlsmp #fanfic

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astronomodome · 1 year

Text

[Winter. A dark pine forest. Half-melted puddles of snow rest in shadows and drip from leaves. Somewhere, a bird is chirping. A beautiful day. Spring is coming.]

[In the distance, a keening cry splits the air like the swing of an axe. A wail of grief, perhaps. Or an animal in pain.]

[The walls of a keep construct themselves as if from memory. Cobblestone and dark wood. Grazing livestock. Farmland… and an altar of smooth, dark stone. Trampled farmland. Dead animals. Charred wood. Half-toppled, blackened cobble from walls that could no longer bear the weight of war.]

[MARTYN enters. He’s in his usual outfit- t-shirt, jean shorts, sandals- but despite the snow he doesn’t seem cold. In fact, he looks quite clean and healthy. He paces across the keep casually, looking out on the scene, unsurprised- or perhaps uninterested. Distracted. Looking for something.]

MARTYN: I’ve always liked to think of my story as a kind of classic hero’s journey. The good guy starts out all naive and scared, faces a few monsters, learns how to get along, goes and defeats the villain. Wins. Throws a big party or something like that. [He chuckles to himself.] The thing is, I figured out early on that the trick to it all is to stop caring about people. Stop trusting. Turns out it’s pretty easy to survive like that. Take on the big bad wolf and come out the other side alright.

[A pause. MARTYN idly studies a pile of rubble off to one side of the keep. Is it his imagination, or is it still smoking?]

MARTYN: It’s lonely, though.

MARTYN: Chapter One: Red Spring. The day I decided to stop caring.

[REN enters, in a panic. He is visibly tired and disheveled, gripping his forearm as if to nurse an injury. His free hand clutches a sword tightly. His skin is sickly gray; his eyes, half-hidden behind cracked sunglasses, shine a deep red. Blood drips from a crown planted snugly on his head. His footprints leave red stains on the snow.]

[MARTYN is not hidden, but REN cannot see him.]

[MARTYN loses his detached attitude, freezing in place, staring. He reaches his hand out weakly, but can do nothing else but watch.]

[GRIAN and SCAR enter in pursuit of REN. They are both holding swords and smiling brightly. They are injured, too, but they don’t seem to notice or care. They, too, do not see MARTYN. MARTYN barely registers their entrance- he is still staring at REN.]

[REN scrambles back to stand atop the altar, brandishing his sword at the intruders. His hand is shaking. He pretends not to lean on the altar to help him stand.]

REN: [In a bad Scottish accent] Scar, it is you and me to the death, laddie.

[SCAR grins, lopsided, wicked. He steps forward with confidence: a challenge gladly accepted. GRIAN shouts and spins around, striking at an invisible enemy- lost to memory- with his sword.]

[The fight is short. SCAR’s sword finds a home between two of REN’s ribs and stays there. GRIAN, still preoccupied, finds time to cheer encouragingly.]

[MARTYN looks on, completely frozen with horror.]

[REN falls, slowly, his red eyes wide with pain and terror. Light fades from them. He takes one final breath- and at last looks directly at MARTYN. Recognition. He tries to speak, but he cannot. Or maybe he just spits blood.]

[SCAR and GRIAN seem to follow REN’s gaze. They turn abruptly to face MARTYN as though he had always been there. SCAR pulls his sword out of REN unceremoniously, and he slumps against the altar, dead. His crown slips from his head and clatters loudly against the polished stone.]

[MARTYN is broken out of his trance, fully in the moment.]

MARTYN: [shouting] Ren, no!

SCAR: Kill the Hand! Kill the Hand on the altar of pain!

[Once again, SCAR lunges forward. GRIAN watches. MARTYN tries to feint backwards, but he has no sword or shield with which to defend himself. A clean slice through the abdomen, another through the neck. There are no physical wounds on MARTYN- he is just as clean looking as the moment he entered the keep. But he recoils and clutches at the places SCAR hit him all the same. He stands there, wavering. Shivering. Winter.]

[MARTYN opens his mouth, a breathless no, never. But it is too late for him. A puddle of snow, nearly melted, flecked with drops of blood, pools on the ground beneath him. He tips over gracelessly into it. There are tears in his eyes.]

[GRIAN and SCAR cheer, but it is distant. Their laughter and whoops of victory fade into the background. Muffled.]

[The pale light of the sun fades, and with it, the keep, REN, GRIAN, and SCAR. MARTYN’s corpse remains, kneeling in the snow. After a moment, it, too, is gone.]

[Once again, that keening cry in the distance. An axe falls.]

#sorry for no line break but it’s super late and I can’t do it in mobile #trafficblr #life series #third life #my writing #renchanting duo #this is weirdchamp I know but I was struck by a bolt of divine inspiration or something idk

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cathumanthing2 · 9 months

Text

Traveling through Glimmergrove at night wasn't the best idea Shelby had ever had, she would admit. It had only gotten dark about an hour ago, yet she was still having to fight her way through the large amount of mobs that were out for her blood.

A zombie hit her back and she spun around to slice it away, only to be attacked from the other side. She was surrounded by horrendous creatures.

"Hey!" A voice called, and Shelby looked up from fighting the horde of skeletons and zombies approaching. A shadowy figure slashed through the monsters with ease, making their way towards her.

:readmore:

The gleaming head of a ginormous battle axe pressed into her throat, and now that the figure was closer, Shelby could make out a few features, and oh…

The figure was pretty. Very pretty.

It was a woman, she could see, with her hair half-up in two messy, small ponytails, with the rest of her inky black hair flowing down her shoulders and glittering in the moonlight. She had sharp features; angled cheekbones and a small, pointed nose with a light scattering of freckles across it. Her dark eyes gleamed in the moonlight through the mask she was wearing to disguise her appearance, clever and calculating her every move. She was wearing black battle armor, and was absolutely ripped. (She seemed fuzzy around the edges, and faded into the background if Shelby wasn't looking directly at her, but she just chalked it up to exhaustion.)

Shelby felt like she would faint on the spot.

"Who are you?" the woman demanded, and oh, right, she was holding a battle axe to her neck.

"I-I…" She stammered, feeling a blush creep up her neck and into her face.

"Well? You're a witch, and were standing in the middle of a horde of mobs. I have reason to believe you might be malicious." She raised an eyebrow and put a slight bit more pressure onto her neck. A small bead of blood began to form.

"I'm the Great Evermoore Shubble of the Witch, but you can also call me Shelby!" Shelby said, and the monster slayer snorted, a glint of amusement in her eyes.

Shelby blinked for a second, feeling her brain reboot for a second, before she realized her word mixup. "Oh, sorry, I meant Great Witch Shelby of the Evermoore, but you can call me Shubble. Wow, I'm really tonight slow- I mean, slow tonight, sorry!" She giggled nervously. Her face was a blazing red.

The woman stared at her for a moment, barely hidden amusement written across her face, before lowering the axe and holding out a hand for Shelby to shake. "Local monster slayer of Glimmergrove, you can call me Elizabeth. The people call me the Shadow Slayer for some reason, but it sounds cool so I don't mind. Nice to meet you, Great Witch Shelby of the Evermoore!" Her voice was bright and bubbly, a stark contrast with the cold tone from before.

Shelby stared for a second, before her brain worked again and she tentatively shook Elizabeth's hand, and holy crap she was strong-

(Shelby ignored how Elizabeth's hand passed through her own for a second. It didn't matter.)

Elizabeth smiled. "So, what's a beautiful witch such as yourself doing walking around Glimmergrove in the middle of the night?" she asked with a smirk, leaning on her shield. Shelby blushed.

"I, uh, I gotta get to the palace by noon tomorrow to meet with the royal family. To introduce myself as the new witch of the Evermoore, y'know?" She laughed anxiously.

"Well, may I accompany you there? You're not from here, and it's dangerous out here at night, with the curse and all. You might need the protection of the Shadow Slayer." She offered, and Shelby felt herself nodding yes before being able to fully process the offer.

Elizabeth smiled brightly. "Great! Let's go, Shelby!" She grabbed Shelby's hand and started dragging her in the direction of the palace.

Shelby's head spun. Gods, she was doomed

#empires smp #fanfiction #fanfic #nature wives #these gay idiots #katherine is a half shadow half glitch because yes #my ao3 is CatHumanThing btw

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slothquisitor · 3 months

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There for the Taking

In which Liv has a crisis, and Astarion is kind of mean. Or what if your good character was just a tiny bit tempted by Astarion's suggestion you take over the cult? Thanks to TheWyvernRising (on AO3) for letting me borrow Rowan and also naming the fic. Titles are hard. Liv x Astarion, 4.6k, just angst.

Also on AO3.

______________________________________________________________

Blights and shambling mounds sharp as razors leap from the darkness. Here the shadows cut and slice. Despite her hypervigilance in this place, Liv is surprised all the same. She lobs a bolt of fire at the nearest blight, hoping that they might be vulnerable to fire damage. It explodes into flames and needles, and she feels as if she’s being stung by a hundred bees at once on every exposed bit of skin.

Astarion has used the distraction to try and get close, stepping around the back side of the shambling mound. He gets in two quick dagger strikes before the mound’s long, vine-like branches snap his way. The tendrils twist around his feet, pulling him down to the ground where the mound rips into him.

His name catches in her throat as she uselessly screams his name. It had been a bad idea to come up this path. It had been her decision, and she had walked them right into an ambush. They’re looking for a house Halsin had seen, apparently surrounded by wildflowers in this bleak and desolate place. It might well be the key to breaking the curse on this land, but right now, she’s not sure why they’re bothering when everything here wants to kill them.

And Astarion hasn’t moved. His pale skin is marred with gashes and scrapes, and he isn’t fucking moving.

Karlach is trying to get to the mound while contending with two smaller blights, and Shadowheart is slowly making her way toward Astarion’s still unmoving form. Liv hurls another spell at the mound, determined to give Shadowheart a clear path. Liv had been trying to conserve her magic, but the fight is looking far more dire than she’s comfortable with. She isn’t about to lose any of her friends to fucking trees .

She conjures a tiny mote of flame that snakes into the backfield and then explodes into a fireball. The outward in a burst of heat very nearly engulfs Karlach, her great axe slicing and splintering through a blight. A few more strategically fired scorching rays and swings from Karlach’s unrelenting axe, and the last of the cursed trees fall. Liv is breathing hard, her magic sputtering. Despite her best efforts to stay out of the fray, her arms and face are covered in small cuts from exploding needles, they sting as her sweat runs into them.

Shadowheart’s spiritual guardians dissipate, leaving them in darkness once more. She’s kneeling at Astarion’s side, and Liv realizes with a certain degree of horror that his injuries are much worse than she thought. And it hurts .

She knows what this is. What they are. She doesn’t get to cry out his name when collapses. She doesn’t get to have her heart squeezed vice-like while she watches Shadowheart’s healing magic pour into him. That’s not what this is.

Shadowheart swears as a healing spell does nothing, and then looks up at Liv. “I need a scroll!”

Liv digs into her bag, drawing out one of their precious scrolls of revivify. They’ve only had to use these twice. Once when Lae’zel was knocked into a chasm by a minotaur in the Underdark, and another on Wyll after a thunder arrow knocked him into the lava of the Grymforge. They’re lucky to even have these scrolls, to have options to avoid the finality of death. But it doesn’t help her feel any less panic as she hands the scroll over with shaking hands.

This sort of magic isn’t her forte. She can craft a fireball, mimic lightning, and throw up shields to protect herself, but she has no spells for moments like this. She cannot heal or ease anyone’s pain. She’s barely been able to craft them healing potions. All of her magic…her studying…what is it for if she can’t truly help people?

A moment later, filled with a burst of divine magic, Astarion’s eyes open. He’s alive. Well, as alive as he was before anyway. And the tightness that had settled in Liv’s chest loosens. She’s more than simply relieved; she’s grateful. She wants to yell at him about being too close to enemies, at his infuriating cockiness, and she wants to pull him into a hug, make sure that he is in fact alright.

She doesn’t do any of that.

“That nearly ended me,” he says quietly. He’s inches from death’s door, his skin a collection of bruises and cuts, but he’s fine. He’ll be fine.

“Only nearly,” Shadowheart replies with a small smile of triumph.

They’re all looking a little worse for wear, and one glance up the path tells Liv that this is a dead end anyway. “This is certainly not the right way. Do we need to go back to Last Light?” Liv asks.

“And risk another ambush?” Karlach asks, eyes darting about the darkness.

“We should take an hour here, at the very least,” Shadowheart says, hands still hovering over Astarion’s wounds. Her magic glows a bright blue and the worst of his wounds stitch together.

She doesn’t love the idea of waiting around here in the darkness or something else to find them, but Karlach has a point. They can at least light some torches and keep the worst shadows at bay for now. Around them there is nothing but the crumbled remains of what was once a tower, perhaps it was a lookout on this ruined battlefield. “Alright then, let’s take an hour.”

She busies herself setting up a perimeter of torches, but it’s not quite distracting her from the image of Astarion crumpled on the ground, all life gone from his eyes. It’s startling how precarious all of this feels, and how much she cares . There are many things from her past life she has tried to leave behind, but caring for those who wouldn’t give a second thought to her doesn’t seem to be one of them. It’s stupid, really. She’s at least ten years too old for this sort of behavior and far too clever for it besides. She knew what Astarion was when she met him in that clearing and she knew what he was offering. Looking for more is simply an exercise in heartbreak.

And yet. Her foolish fucking heart wants anyway.

She sits down against the base of the tower, as far away from Astarion and Shadowheart as she can manage and still be within the safety of the torchlight. She pulls out her spellbook and begins looking for anything she might have learned that she can prepare, something that might be more fucking useful.

It surprises her when Astarion shuffles over, cradling a health potion and still battered and bruised despite Shadowheart’s healing. She curses her stupid heart for racing when he sits down heavily beside her.

“Well, I think I might have argued to stay in camp today if I’d known the trees were going to attack us,” he says. “Really, what is it with this godsforsaken place? It’s downright awful.”

“Really makes you miss dirty goblin camps, doesn’t it?”

“Shockingly, yes,” he replies, flashing her a slight grin before downing the healing potion with a grimace.

And then he tips his head back, eyes falling closed as he tries to rest. She lets her gaze linger on him a moment longer, convincing herself that he is in fact safe. Then, she turns her attention back to her spellbook and tells herself that his presence beside her means nothing. Right?

***

Shadowheart’s healing magic had done good enough work in bringing Astarion back from death’s door, but there was something vaguely disquietening about having been dead. It’s a different sort of death than what he experienced when Cazador turned him. Still hurt like the hells though. He feels a disconcerting distance between himself and his own limbs as if he hasn’t quite settled back within his body. In some ways it’s kind of pleasant, to be floating above his body instead of trapped within it. It’s easier to pretend he’s somewhere else.

And he does, for a while. Though Liv’s shifting and the quiet sound of her turning the pages of her spellbook occasionally pull him back. But even that is kind of nice. It’s…easy to be with Liv. It’s not like that with their other companions. Karlach and Gale make him tired. Wyll and Shadowheart are fun to trade words with, but even they feel like work. Lae’zel and Liv seem to be the only members of their little group who seem to value a comfortable silence. And Liv seems to always sense when he doesn’t want to talk, seems content to just be.

Liv had looked…bothered when he’d come to. Her expression was schooled into something cool and impassive, but her eyes…her eyes were filled with worry. He thought for a moment she might fuss over him, express some outward concern for his safety the same way he’s sure she’d yelled his name when he fell, but instead, she’d simply stepped away. It had seemed almost forced. Even after tendays of traveling together, he’s not sure what’s going on in her head half the time.

So perhaps that is why he presses forward, headlong into a conversation that might be best left alone. “So…Moonrise towers approaches…”

“Assuming we ever actually make it there, yes,” Liv replies, not looking up from her spellbook.

“You know…I feel a connection with you. Like we’re two souls walking the same path,” he says. That gets her attention, gets her to look up from her spellbook. There’s something that looks perilously close to hope in her eyes. Something about it bothers him and he almost abandons the whole conversation. But there’s no time like the present, and he needs to know what it is she plans to do. “You might be a little naive in the ways of the world, but I see promise in you. Ambition .”

She frowns and whatever had brightened her eyes dims. “What do you mean naive?”

He needs to be careful with this. Guide her to the conclusion he’s come to. Gently. “Just that you…have a big heart. You like doing what’s right. So I was thinking, what would be the right thing to do when we get to Moonrise Towers? When we come face to face with whoever is controlling the parasites in our heads.”

Her brow furrows. “The right thing to do would be destroy the cult and end its evil forever.”

Ugh. Really? She’s unwilling to let go of this ridiculous hero streak of hers. He rolls his eyes. “Gods. No…try to think outside the box. Just a little.” She’s clever, he’s begging her to consider the implications. “Consider the parasites in our skulls and think - how many others have the mind flayers infected? Hundreds? Thousands? And they’re not just goblin trash - there are powerful people in the worms’ thrall. And whoever’s waiting at Moonrise Towers controls it all. But if we can take that control from them, imagine the power we’d wield.”

“The power we’d wield? Are you…you’re being serious,” Liv says, words slowly rising in pitch. “What is it about me exactly that would lead you to believe I’d have any interest in that kind of power?”

She sounds almost hurt, offended, even. It surprises him, but he doesn’t stop pushing. If only to see just how far he can before her careful control breaks. “So much for hoping you had ambition. I’m just saying there’s an opportunity here. If we can control the tadpoles, we can keep ourselves safe and liberate the world from this evil.”

“By making people our slaves? I thought you of all people would see the problem inherent in that.”

Anger flares in him, bright and fast and razor sharp. She doesn’t know anything . She’s never had to experience what it’s like to be powerless, to have no control over your own fate. If there is power on offer, and if there is a way for him to gain an advantage over Cazador he will fucking take it. “So much for thinking you had ambition. Isn’t that supposed to be the hubris of wizards? How utterly wasteful.”

She closes her spellbook with a snap, leaning far away from him. “This is clearly going to be surprising to you, but I don’t want power. Certainly not that kind.” Then she stands and brushes the dirt from her robes.

“You don’t have to be so wet around the ears about it,” he laments. He knows that he’s hurting her feelings and probably jeopardizing whatever this thing between them is that he had fought so hard for, but he can’t seem to stop. He's always doing this, pushing her and watching for the point where her patience, her unyielding kindness finally breaks because he doesn't seem to know what else to do with these things she offers him.

She stares at him for a moment and shakes her head. “You know, saving you from Cazador and liberating everyone with a worm in their head aren’t mutually exclusive.” And then she walks away without another word.

He’s sure she believes what she’s saying. She’s fundamentally honest. Even when she’s convincing cultists that their group is friendly or persuading mad doctors to let their nurses slice them to ribbons, she’s not a liar…so he’s not sure why her comment gives him little comfort. The tadpole is the thing that’s set him free. It’s given him back his life and given him the advantage over Cazador. He’s no longer compelled, controlled, chained. And even after everything he’s told her, she would strip that protection away, make him a slave to Cazador’s whims once more.

He doesn’t know how to tell her that her world is different from his. That cruelty has ruled his life for longer than she’s been alive. He knows what survival really takes.

She wants to help him. He knows that; he can sense it whenever he tells her about his life under Cazador’s thumb. But she doesn’t understand the power, the absolute control because she is too damn afraid of taking it herself. But what he can’t fathom is why….she grew up with power, in power. And yet…she seems so damn afraid of it. Their dream visitor offered her power too, and she absolutely refused it. Even Gale had at least been willing to hear their guardian out.

He’s going to have to apologize for this whole conversation later when she’s not so upset and he can be convincingly contrite. A part of him rankles at the thought, at the memories it stirs up. But he’d had a plan, it wouldn’t do to ruin it all now.

***

It’s late in Last Light, but Liv can’t stand to be in camp tonight. So instead, she sits at the bar by the fire, nursing a glass of…something. She’s not really sure what it is, the label was too faded to read, but it smells strong and tastes just sweet enough that she welcomes the burn with each sip. She’s not alone in the downstairs of the inn, though the other folks here are just as solitary as she is this evening.

Almost everyone left in the bar area is mourning in some way, Harpers who lost friends on the road. Tieflings who were separated from friends and kin. Flaming Fist who feel they failed their Duke.

Liv feels like an interloper. She’s not mourning anything except perhaps the future heartbreak that’s sure to crush her sooner rather than later. She can’t shake the conversation she had with Astarion earlier today. Would he take that sort of power for himself? Does he think she would? Is that what he really thinks of her?

She’s been accused of being many things she doesn’t find particularly accurate over the years. Some have found her cold, too impassive, too unmoved by things. Others still have told her she is too passionate, too set in her ways and her belief in right and wrong. She’s not sure if the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Most days the only thing she feels she has in excess are feelings. She feels too much and too deeply, and simply ends up hurting too much of the time.

She wishes that she didn’t want Astarion to be the person who knows her best. Especially when he’s so wrong about her, but then…there had been a moment. A small, small part of her was tempted. Just for a moment. It made her sick.

Perhaps he did know her well enough to know she’d be tempted. Well enough to echo words she’s heard before: a lack of ambition, a bad wizard, what a waste. Fuck.

“Mind if I join you?” asks a soft voice at her side, and Liv is startled from the downward spiral of her thoughts.

Liv recognizes the elven woman, Rowan. She’d been injured badly when the inn was attacked, and while she’s not a Harper, it’s clear Jaheira trusts her. She doesn’t really want company, but perhaps it can’t be worse than whatever one wizard pity party she’s been having for gods know how long. She summons a smile she doesn’t particularly feel. “Not at all.”

Rowan sits beside her, her long red hair falling like a curtain between them. She tucks it behind her ear and sighs. “You’re looking a little too long-faced to be the long-awaited hero here to save the day.”

Liv liked being the hero back in the Grove…before she realized how heavy the weight of expectation could land on one’s shoulders. Hope shone in the eyes of the tieflings from the Grove when she and her companions arrived here to Last Light, and she couldn’t help but meet that hope with promises and reassurances she’s not sure she can make good on. Even when she tempers expectations by promising nothing more than to look for friends and kin…it still feels dishonest.

“Isobel is the real hero here. We couldn’t make it more than a few miles down the road today before being ambushed by shadow-cursed trees,” she says. She doesn’t mean for the words to twist bitterly in her mouth as she speaks, but they do anyway.

Rowan watches her, amethyst eyes sharp. She doesn’t say anything for a long while. “Are you alright?”

This is the one question that goes unasked amongst her companions. It’s been avoided for tendays now, ever since it became clear that they’re no longer in immediate danger of turning into mind flayers. The answer itself is fairly obvious for them all, who would be alright under these circumstances? And Liv is tempted to force a smile, to be a good little Vires.

“No,” she whispers. There’s something freeing in the admission, given to this stranger. She doesn’t want to interrogate why it is so much easier to admit this to someone she hardly knows instead of her friends. Her eyes burn so she takes another sip of her drink, keeping her gaze focused on the far wall.

She has a tadpole in her head and everyone wants her to save the day, and she is falling in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same. She and her friends are flung into danger every day and today she has nothing to show for it, but scrapes and bruises and new nightmares to haunt her. Halsin keeps looking at her like she can help him break the curse on this fucking land…and the heroes in the books she’s read never mentioned the fucking anxiety that comes with all these people relying upon them. She’s not cut out for this.

After all, Astarion had looked at her and said to himself that she’d want power, no matter the cost…and is there something buried in her soul by her fucking family that she can’t smother no matter what how she tries? Sometimes her last name feels like a stain she can’t wash out.

“Oh shit,” Rowan says, offering her a handkerchief and pouring more of whatever she’s drinking into her glass. “I was really trying to help, not make things markedly worse.”

It’s then that Liv realizes she’s crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. It takes some effort, but she manages to slow her breathing down and get a hold of herself. Gods, she can’t remember the last time she cried, much less in front of someone else. “You’re very kind…I am so sorry. It’s just been…a bad day.”

Rowan nods, looking at her with concern. “Just…slow down. It’s alright.”

It’s not, but Liv is grateful for the assurance anyway. She can sit here and have a drink with a stranger and be perfectly normal. She’s sure of it. She takes a sip of her drink and nods. “You’re looking better than when I last saw you,” she attempts.

Rowan snorts softly. “You mean when my insides were practically falling out of me?”

“Yeah…sorry.”

“Just lucky there are plenty of good and willing healers around,” Rowan says, and Liv doesn’t miss the way her gaze wanders to the door where Halsin sits vigil over the man who had somehow survived the Shadowfell.

Isobel and Halsin and Shadowheart have magic that is actually useful; magic that actually helps people. “Very lucky,” she agrees.

“You know, at the risk of providing unsolicited advice…I often find that things look better in the morning. Nothing drains the hope out of a situation like being tired.”

Liv nods. “You’re right.” She’s unlikely to find any answers at the bottom of this glass anyway.

“For what it’s worth, you’ve already done a lot for the people here. Don’t let whatever defeat found you today keep you down.”

Liv pushes up from the bar, her limbs heavy with exhaustion. “Thank you for the company.”

Rowan offers a smile. “Any time.”

She wishes she had something more to offer than thanks. She worries over the interaction all the way back to her tent, as if admitting she’s not okay has opened up something, some vulnerability that everyone else will be able to see. It’s an old fear…and not very generous in the face of the kindness she received tonight.

Their little encampment next to the inn is quiet, the fire has already burned down to the embers. She doesn’t want to see Astarion, but some part of her can’t resist glancing at his tent anyway. He’s not there. Which is just as well. She’s not sure what she’d say to him anyway.

She glances up at the bright moon, at the shield Isobel keeps around this place, and tries to tell herself that all the hopes she carries aren’t misplaced.

***

Astarion has spent a tedious hour hunting around Last Light for any creatures he can drink from. He’d managed to find a few small animals, and he tries to remind himself that he’s survived on far less and far worse, but it’s hard to remember because he’s hungry now . Besides, animal blood doesn’t hit quite the same now he’s had the blood of thinking creatures.

But they’ve spent their days fighting shadows and trees and shadow-cursed zombies, and so he’s had to make due in other ways. He could ask Liv for blood; she’s been willing enough in the past, but there’s something about the fact they’ve slept together that changes everything about asking for her blood. He seduced her for safety, for security, asking for her blood in addition to that feels like taking far too much.

He takes and he takes and he takes. Beyond the sketch she drew of him, he’s never taken anything from her that wasn’t already offered. And he’s not sure when it began to bother him, but it happened sometime between figuring out that the sadness in her eyes only truly disappears when she has something to offer someone and realizing that she never asks for a damn thing. He is well-versed enough in starvation to recognize it in another, but he can’t figure out what she could possibly be lacking.

He sees her coming down from the inn towards their encampment. She’s pulling her long hair loose from the tight bun she keeps it in most days. She’s almost to her tent when he intercepts her, falling into step beside her. She jumps when she notices his presence.

“Gods, don’t do that,” she says. “Where in the hells did you come from?”

“I was simply walking back to my tent. I can’t help that you’re unobservant.” He wants her to ask him where he’s been, so he can tell her about his less-than-successful hunt. Perhaps if she offers her blood it will feel less like taking.

But she doesn’t.

“Well, good night then,” she says without looking at him. He can smell the alcohol on her. She drinks little, so it is more than a little surprising. Warning bells are going off in his head. Something is wrong…off. Suddenly, this thing between them feels tremulous and fragile.

“Are you upset with me?” he asks. Genuinely curious. She doesn’t seem the type to hold a grudge, but he’s been wrong about her before.

She looks back at him, brow furrowed. “No, Astarion. I’m not upset with you.” The words are brittle things, but they don’t ring false.

“A pity. I’ve been told I’m quite good at apologies,” pitching his voice down, filling it with dark promises. The sentiment isn’t true. He’s been told he’s good at groveling, and that’s not the same thing. But it’s a half-truth; it’s the only thing he seems to have to offer her.

She’s feeling distant, and something about that makes him want to grasp tighter to whatever this thing is he’s orchestrated between them. As if he could wrench back the simplicity, the surety he felt when he invited her to join him after the tiefling party.

“I’m tired,” she says. It’s the truest thing she’s said so far, and it feels suddenly the most dangerous.

She doesn’t want him. It’s the most freeing thing in the world, there’s a certain relief at her refusal, and yet some part of him is disappointed.

He doesn’t show it; instead, he smiles. “Well then, goodnight, my dear.”

She disappears into her tent without so much as a glance behind, and he is the one left there standing in the darkness, wondering what it was she actually needed this evening and why he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

He had intended to twine himself so inextricably to her that the safety, the brightness, and the implicit trust she is afforded would fall easily on him too. And it has. The hope and expectations she was loaded up with the second she appeared at Last Light have followed him too. But it hasn’t filled up whatever lives inside him, whatever empty void is left of his heart.

He’s startingly glad she turned down his company and simultaneously worried that he’s lost the only skill he’s ever had. He likes being in her presence, likes talking with her. She has an ability to listen when others talk in a way that makes him feel seen and heard. Who wouldn’t want her undivided attention when it feels like that?

And that’s all this is, isn’t it? An enjoyment of her attention. Nothing more. He tells himself that she’s getting just as much out of their little arrangement as he is, but even as he thinks it he’s not sure it’s true.

Perhaps whatever has gone wrong today is simply a byproduct of their surroundings, of the general disquiet in this place. Perhaps tomorrow will be different, better. Perhaps she will keep offering him beautiful, impossible moments of comfort…and he will keep taking them. And perhaps it won’t bother him.

#astarion #astarion x tav #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate fanfiction #astarion x liv #bright lost things #slothquisitorwrites

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lilac-hecox · 6 months

Note

for the smosh prompt thing what about ian and anthony watching scary movies for halloween and ian is scared so anthony has to comfort him?

Ian/Anthony - Scary Movie

It was Ian’s idea to get really fucking high. It was Anthony’s idea to watch a scary movie. Right now, Ian only regrets one of those decisions. Even normal sober Ian can’t handle scary movies well, but now that he was high. Ian was fucking struggling.

Everything felt too real. Even as he and Anthony sat on Anthony’s couch together and watched the movie, every creak, every odd noise, sound effect, and gory murder had Ian jumping like it could actually happen to him, like he was next to be chased through the woods with a serial killer hot on his trail.

“You’re such a baby!” Anthony says around giggles.

Ian isn’t looking at him, mainly because he’s covering his eyes from the screen, but still.

“Shut up! You know I hate scary shit.”

“It’s just a movie,” Anthony says, still laughing, but it is softer and fonder, “C’mere.”

Ian wants to resist, but he feels Anthony’s hand wind around his waist, and Anthony is tugging him closer. The blanket across their laps shifts with the movement and Ian tugs it back up, feeling too vulnerable without the giant fluffy blanket strewn over them, like it would actually save them if some maniac with an axe or a hammer broke in.

Ian finally relents and uncovers his face. On screen there is a young girl walking through a dark house. She is hiding from the killer and Ian just knows the dude is going to jump out at her any second and slice her to ribbons. Still, like an idiot, he keeps watching, his high mind too focused on the darkness around her, the quiet of her footsteps.

Predictably, the killer jumps out of a closet and attacks the girl. Ian screams bloody murder, jumping with fear. Anthony giggles again but Ian is so scared all he can do is hide his face in Anthony’s shoulder.

“I hate you,” Ian mumbles into Anthony’s broad shoulder, his voice muffled by Anthony’s t-shirt.

“It’s not real, baby,” Anthony says, but he rubs at Ian’s hip all the same.

“It feels too real,” Ian whines.

“Right, because we all know Sarah Michelle Gellar was actually stabbed to death in a house in Vermont.”

“Don’t jinx her,” Ian says.

Anthony laughs, but he relents. He picks up the remote and turns the movie off. Instantly, Ian can breathe a little easier.

“Was this all a ploy to get me to cuddle with you?” Ian asks, because at the moment, he’s half-way on top of Anthony, with Anthony’s strong, warm, arm still wound around his side.

Anthony shrugs, “Maybe, it did work.”

Ian frowns, “Or you could have, you know, just asked me.”

“Hey, it isn’t my fault you’re so cute when you’re a scared little mess,” Anthony teases, but he leans in, shifting so he’s facing Ian instead of being pinned by him. Anthony cups Ian’s chin and then presses a sweet kiss to his mouth. “You scaredy cat, mother fucker.”

“If this is your idea of foreplay, it could be better,” Ian says, rolling his eyes.

“You wanna…go to the bedroom and I can show you some better foreplay?” Anthony asks, waggling his eyebrows over exaggeratedly and making Ian laugh.

Ian would like to, but he glances backwards at the dark hallway that leads to Anthony’s room and he shivers.

“Let’s just stay on the couch, there’s room, right?”

Anthony raises an eyebrow and notes the darkness around them.

“You’re still scared?” Anthony asks, sweetly. He opens his arms, “Come to daddy. I’ll cuddle you awhile longer.”

Ian sighs in annoyance, but he still slides himself into Anthony’s arms, settling his body alongside Anthony’s so they are laying facing each other. Anthony wraps his arms around Ian and squeezes.

“There, nice and safe,” he says, as he kisses Ian once more.

Ian rolls his eyes, but secretly he’s super grateful that Anthony is the one here with him, and that Anthony possesses the skills needed to always calm him down and bring him back with easy and affectionate touches.

“Okay, but if some axe murderer shows up, I’m sacrificing you first,” Ian mumbles against Anthony’s lips.

Anthony snorts, “A risk I’m willing to take.”

#ianthony #smoshships #polysmosh #cw: drugs #fluff #cuddling #kissing #drug use #scaredy cat!ian #my writing #my fic #my fics

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i-am-still-bb · 5 months

Text

No. 28

“We might not make it to the morning; so go on and tell me now.” | Bloody Knife | Sacrifice | “You'll have to go through me.”

Pairing: Fili/Kili Rating: T Universe: Book Words: 2066

A/N: I haven't read The Hobbit in quite a while, so the sequence of events and the timing between them, etc. may not be accurate to the book.

The tunnel smelled strongly of dragon. Kili had not been expecting the smell. Fire? Yes. Claws? Yes. The smell? Absolutely not. It was like rotting meat and overturned earth. There was also the smell of smoke, but he had been expecting that smell. And it was not the main thing that you could smell.

Everyone had laid out their bedrolls along the passage way. They were uncomfortable being too far from the hidden door and the crack of light that let in fresh air and a little bit of day light, but the exposure of it made them uncomfortable as well. And if they went deeper into the tunnel then they were closer to the opening that lead them into the throne room where Smaug lay curled on his hoard of gold while brooding and plotting. So they were situated nearly half way to between the two ends.

They had to be quiet because any sound they made echoed down the tunnel. A kicked stone, a hissed curse made them all freeze. Waiting. Listening. To see if Smaug had heard them, if they were moments from discovery. When there was no rumbling or glow of fire they would relax enough to lay down or return to whatever hushed conversation they were having.

Desiring some privacy there was some distance between different groups of them. Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur all sat together, talking, and sleeping as a group, while Oin and Gloin were bunked down with Ori, Nori, and Dori.

Fili and Kili had set up their bedrolls some distance away from the others. Bombur snored and neither Fili nor Kili could sleep well if they were still awake when Bombur fell asleep.

Right now they were all waiting for Bilbo to come back with word about what he had seen and heard in the throne room. Some were sleeping, but Fili was slowly but steadily sharpening his swords, knives, and axes. They all started on his right side. And, when sharpened, he would set them down on his left. He was nearly done with the small pile by this point.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Kili asked.

Fili’s hand paused its continuous motion. “I don’t know, Kili.” He started running the whetstone down the length of the sword again. “There’s still a dragon to kill, so I imagine there will be fighting at some point.

Kili sat down and scooted so that his back was against the smooth stone wall. He was impressed with the care that his ancestors had taken with crafting even this small hallway that was not meant to be used by many. They could have easily left rough edges, and an uneven floor, but Kili had looked and had been unable to find anything that could cause you to trip in the dark, or a chip in the wall that could slice open a finger as you felt your way along. He could not help but compare it to the halls of Ered Luin. He missed those halls. He had longed for their rough warmth more than once in the past months. But Erebor was something else entirely. If they were successful. If they reclaimed the mountain then things would not be the same. And there were bound to be good ways, but also bad ways.

He probably would not get to see those halls again. Amad would travel with the rest of their kin to Erebor to take up residence in the halls of their fathers.

“Do you think that there are enough of us?” Kili asked hesitantly. “We’ve never fought in a battle. Thorin, Dwalin, and Balin did, but that was a long time ago.”

“Gandalf seemed to think that fourteen was the right number.”

Kili hummed.

“What do you think it will be like if we do manage to evict Smaug the Terrible?”

“I think there will be a lot of work at first,” Fili replied.

Kili nodded and watched Fili’s hands continue their work while he spoke.

“Obviously there will be a lot of cleaning to do, repairs to be carried out, furnishings, dealing with the hoard of treasure won’t be the least of all those tasks. I imagine Thorin is going to want the Arkenstone found as quickly as possible.”

“The Right to Rule.”

Fili nodded. “Then there will be dealing with the land around the mountain. Sorting out what to do with the ruins of Dale. Then there will be the political aspects of it all, Lake Town, the Elves of Mirkwood, and anyone else who lives nearby.”

“What about us?”

“I imagine we’ll be busy.”

“Yeah…” Kili trailed off, trying to think of how to phrase what he wanted to ask. What about them? What about their futures? Clearly living here was going to be very different from living in Ered Luin. There would be a great deal more pressure, a lot more expectations, more people watching and commenting on their actions.

What about marriage?

Kili had never really thought about that before and, therefore, had not been bothered by the prospect of either of them marrying. But now, with Erebor, nearly within their grasp, the thought bothered him. Fili had been just his for so long. And the prospect of having to share Fili with another, much less multiple others of Fili had children with whomever he married, was… discomforting.

“That’s not really what I—” Kili started to say.

He was distracted by Bilbo running down the corridor at full sprint, his cheeks pink, and he was breathing heavily. Everyone took notice, some standing up, others remaining seated, but their attention was clearly fixed on Kili.

“What’s happened?” Thorin demanded.

Bilbo was bent nearly double, hands on his knees while he fought to catch his breath.

“Smaug…” he gasped.

“Figured that much,” Dwalin growled.

Bilbo saw the sliver of light at the end of the tunnel where the door was still propped open. “We should close the door.”

“What! Why?” Many of them exclaimed at once.

Then they all heard the rumble and rush of wind as Smaug took flight via the main gate. They all looked at one another, their eyes wide with fear and surprise. Smaug had not left the mountain in nearly 60 years, or so they had heard.

“Please shut the door,” Bilbo pleaded. “I fear that he will see it and know where we are.”

“But then we will be trapped in the mountain!”

“With no way out!”

“We’ll be stuck in here with Smaug until we either starve or he eats us.”

“Please!” Bilbo repeated. “You were not there—”

“Shut the door,” Thorin ordered.

“But,” Nori started to protest.

“Now,” Thorin barked.

Dwalin and a few others went to the door and managed to heave it back into place. It closed with a sharp crack. And they were left in complete darkness. Kili had thought the air had been close, thick, and stuffy before, but without the fresh air and light from the outside it quickly became worse.

They all stood in silence in the pitch black. Kili had never been comfortable with this level of darkness. He knew his eyes would eventually adjust and he would be able to see a little, but it had nothing to do with sunlight, starlight, or moonlight. And Bilbo’s eyes would not adjust to the same level, he would be left in the pitch black darkness of the pungent tunnel.

The roar was closer.

Then the earth shook.

Kili grabbed for Fili’s shoulder.

“Kili?”

“I’m okay,” but Kili’s voice shook. There was the distinctive sound of metal on metal while Fili quickly returned all of his weapons to their sheaths. Fili knew each weapon by touch and worked quickly.

The earth shook again. This time knocking some of them from their feet. Kili caught himself on the smooth wall.

“Away from the door!” Thorin shouted.

There was the unmistakable sound of stone cracking.

The plink of small stones that preceded a landslide.

Fili dragged Kili down the tunnel by the placket of his borrowed jerkin. There was the metallic sound of at least one of Fili’s weapons being left behind on the floor of the tunnel as they ran. Kili was nearly jerked from his feet by Fili’s speed even before the next earthquake hit. The earth shook so violently that none of them were able to remain standing.

“Keep moving!” Fili’s voice came from behind Kili, though how he had ended up there was a mystery.

“I’m trying,” Kili said before the moving earth pitched him sideways and then forward on to his face. Fili’s hands were on him, checking. “I’m not hurt,” Kili assured him, answering the silent question.

Then it stopped. As quickly as the earthquakes began they ended.

“Is everyone accounted for?” Thorin shouted from the front.

“More or less,” Bofur grumbled.

“Yes.”

“But we lost any of the supplies that we had brought inside.”

Everyone was present and accounted for and other than bumps and bruises, and a bloodied nose everyone was uninjured.

“What exactly happened with Smaug?” someone demanded of Bilbo

And Bilbo told them.

… Smaug sticking his head in the hole

… the fire he had unleashed that had singged the back of Bilbo’s calves.

A few of the dwarves went to check on the tunnel’s entrance. But it was thoroughly gone. Everything had been smashed and there was the scent of smoke even though there had been nothing to burn anywhere near the door.

Kili wondered if dragon fire could melt solid rock. And he wished Gandalf was there, because he would probably know the answer.

“That’s just great,” Nori grumbled. “We’re trapped between a cave in and a pissed off dragon who is interested in what Hobbit tastes like and is still willing to eat Dwarf even though he’s tired of it.”

“We’ll stay here and wait,” Thorin said authoritatively, interrupting any discontented grumbling. “Smaug might not come back. If he does not then we will find our way out through the treasure chamber.”

“And if he does come back?”

Thorin did not answer.

They all settled down in the dark, overly warm tunnel to wait.

“What were you going to say before?” Fili whispered. The tunnel echoed at this point, and the sound of the others’ breathing filled their ears along with the rumble of Bombur’s snoring, and Bofur’s cursing when he woke his brother every few minutes only for him to fall back to sleep shortly after waking. And then shortly after falling asleep he would start snoring again.

Kili shook his head. “I’ll tell you later.”

“We might not make it to the morning; so go on and tell me now.”

Kili swallowed hard. Then he reached for Fili in the dark. He could now see the outlines of Fili’s face, the broad gestures of his features in the dark. And the longer they were underground without any light, the more detailed his sight would become.

“I just… I…” Kili struggled to find the words.

Fili did not say anything. He listened and waited.

“I…”

Fili squeezed Kili’s knee. Kili covered Fili’s hand with his own.

“I love you,” Kili said so quietly that he could barely hear his own words over the sound of his own heart beating.

“I love you, too.” Fili replied.

“Not like that—” Kili started to explain.

“I know.”

“You do?”

Kili could see the line of Fili’s jaw and his quick smile, and the glint of his eyes when he looked past Kili for a second.

Fili kissed him then.

Kili made a small surprised sound before he could stop himself. Fili’s lips were warm and soft, but there was a pressure to the kiss, and urgency. Fili’s beard rasped against Kili’s skin. Kili moved his hands to keep Fili close. He had stopped thinking full sentences or even anything coherent the moment that Fili’s tongue touched his lower lip. His fingers caught Fili's braids, tugging and tangling them.

“Like that?” Fili asked on an exhale when they parted.

Kili nodded and took a deep breath. “Like that.”

Fili dropped his head forward so their foreheads were touching.

Fili started to speak then, his fingers dancing on the neckline of Kili’s shirt. But his words were interrupted by Thorin starting to rouse the company. It had been a night and most of a day. It was time to move.

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